


Gift from on Eye

by TalkingAnimals



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Canon Asexual Character, Character Death Fix, Emetophobia, M/M, Murder, Original Character Death(s), Other, References to Drugs, Slow Burn, Suicidal Ideation, a BUNCH of dick jokes, a lot of talk about Mary Keay at least, brief flirtations with the idea of sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2020-03-10 05:03:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 55,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18931819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalkingAnimals/pseuds/TalkingAnimals
Summary: "What are you?"The answer comes quick, enthusastic:"I'm fairly certain I'm intended as a, uh, gift."Jon predictably falters."I'm sorry, a what?""You know, a present. Something given without the expectation of return or payment. Not big on birthdays as a kid, huh? That's sad.""I know what a gift is. What I don't understand is how you classify as one.""Aw, now that hurts." Gerard cuts a smile from under the hair falling over his face, sun catching on the metal of his piercings as he flexes his mouth,"I was sent back by the man upstairs, I think. And by man I of course mean the demonic voyeur you're under the employ of.""You were sent back to...to the institute? For what?""I think I was sent back to one specific member of the institute."A falter, picked up quickly as Jon begins to understand:"To...me?"👁Gerry's sent back from the dead, but for what purpose he and Jon struggle to understand.Set after episode 132 and before the events kicked off in 140, which are delayed by the modified canon. This is being written as season 4 releases so I've tried to keep everything as canon complaint as possible





	1. i. Re

Jon refuses to make eye contact with Gerard Keay's ghost.

 _Ghost_ is almost certainly not the correct terminology, it might be more of an...apparition, or a more general sort of illusion -- he won't look at it long enough to properly classify it.

The illusion in question is, however, keeping its eye steadily on _him_. He won't look, but he can feel it sifting through the crowd, catch the constance of its stare in his peripherals. In response he pushes himself forward with increased intensity, tries to maintain a vaguely casual pace as he deeks around bumbling pedestrians, moves towards side streets he's grown accustomed to travelling whenever he catches sight of something troubling on his way back to the institute. He is fairly confident, after a few twisting roads, that he is close enough to the institute and far enough from the last ghost-Gerry sighting to return to the main road.

This, like many of Jon's assumptions, is wildly incorrect.

"Well, this was kind of an obvious endpoint. Guess I should have just headed here, huh?"

The Gerry-like creature in question is alarmingly jovial as it says this, flashing a grin down on the Archivist to cement this impression. Jon's brain flies, urgently, through his internal map of the city's streets, of his easiest escape, of the length of this Gerry's arms and the distance between them and the Archivist's neck.

The noise that leaves him when the entity puts out its hand is not dignified.

"Hi, Jon. Re-incarnated Gerard Keay, here. Nice to meet you in the flesh."

The look Jon gives the hand is dumbfounded, then angry.

"That's not-- are you even _trying_  to be convincing? The stranger ususally at least... _tries_  to imitate people that could be alive, doesn't it?"

"Yes and no. From what I've seen, there's only that one entity that really takes over people's lives that way. Most of them seem to occupy a different manifestation of _unknowing_ \-- which it seems like you did manage to stop, from what I can see! So nice one, there."

"...You're not the Stranger, then."

"Right! Guess again. Probably a good stretch for your Archivist muscles, I'd imagine."

"Then...the flesh?" Jon takes a step back at this realization. "Molding flesh...it's not something I ever questioned the full applications of...i--if you're back for Jared Hopworth, you'll need to know I _did_  release him from the door. And I was _never_  a part of his capture to begin with--"

"Well, none of that sounds very smart. Can't say I'm really behind your decision making on that one. We'll come back to it." Not-notGerry holds Jon's eye, smile warm on his face as he watches Jon struggle.

"Th--the spiral? A disorientation tactic? But your hands aren't-- plus you'd need to be _alive-_ \- and same for the buried, if you'd found some way to claw your way out..."

"Always sort of hidden in plain sight, right? It's so obvious you'll kick yourself when you see how simple it is."

Jon looks up, distracted from the churning gears of his worries, and stares back at the unknown entity creating the Gerry before him. Haloed in a thin band of light, he's pulled his arm back from the failed handshake, resting it tightly along with its partner over his chest. The arms are thick, black tattoos bumping visibly over brown skin and the raise of some betraying their relative freshness. The expression riding his face broadcasts _amusement,_  and as Jon studies him up and down, he pops a middle finger up over one eye, pulling down the eyelid.

Jon kicks himself.

"...The Eye."

"There we go!" His tone neighbours a _guffaw_ as he swings one arm up, slaps Jon enthusiastically on the shoulder. Jon flinches visibly.

"Well, you're _physical_ , so it's not a manifestation of an idea...or, if it is, the eye has--it has _powers_  I wasn't aware of."

"Manifestation's close. Idea's a little loose, though."

The eyes that meet his are thin, antagonistic under Jon's glasses.

"What _are_ you?"

"Once more -- this time, with compulsion!"

Jon stiffens his back, meets the entity's eye over the rim of his glasses:

" _What are you?_ "

The answer comes quick, enthusastic:

"I'm fairly certain I'm intended as a, uh, gift."

Jon predictably falters.

"I'm sorry, a _what_?"

"You know, a present. Something given without the expectation of return or payment. Not big on birthdays as a kid, huh? That's sad."

"I _know_  what a gift is. What I _don't_ understand is how you classify as one."

"Aw, now that hurts." Gerard cuts a smile from under the hair falling over his face, sun catching on the metal of his piercings as he flexes his mouth,

"I was sent back by the man upstairs, I think. And by man I of course mean the demonic voyeur you're under the employ of."

"You were sent back to...to the institute? For _what?_ "

"I think I was sent back to one _specific_ member of the institute."

A falter, picked up quickly as Jon begins to understand:

"To... _me_?"

"Now you're catching on! Figure our lord and sclera wanted to reward you for some good work, employee of the month kind of thing. Ususally folks just get a gift card instead of dragging folks back from the great beyond but, not much I can really say about the matter, huh?"

"So you're supposed to be, what? Some sort of...psychic secretary?"

"Not sure. Apparently whatever the arrangement is I've got some level of freedom here. I don't feel particularly _compelled_  by any actions yet, if you'll forgive the gag."

"And I'm just supposed to trust you outright, am I? I can't imagine the beholding thinks I'm... _that_  stupid, can it?"

"Or that far gone."

Gerry cracks a smile as Jon flinches at this.

"Anyway, I'd be surprised if I was welcomed with open arms here. Your boss was a little _too_ eager to see me pop up in his cell, frankly."

"I'm sorry, you -- 'popped up'? And were with _Elias_?"

"I mean, it coulda been more of a fizzle. Maybe a fade on, some smoke or something real mystical-looking. I wasn't exactly quite _there_  yet."

"Next to Elias."

"Right. Figured he was probably some central hub for the beholding or something. Didn't like the way he said hi to me, like he was expecting me...I saw the prick jump when I popped in there. No wonder Gertrude didn't like him."

"So we are settling on a 'pop', then..."

"Looks like. Anyway, figured the guards had to know what was up with him more or less, so I just yelled and said I had no idea how I got in there, who this maniac was holding me hostage--" His grin peels into a laugh, now, as he holds his hand over his mouth,

"You know, I really don't think he saw it coming! Though I guess all the foresight in the world doesn't make a baton to the gut any less shocking."

"And they-- let you out?"

"Oh, it's not that hard to play the part, especially knowing Gertrude for as long as I did. Tell them you were giving a statement about a spooky ghost you saw, get your voice all shook up, it's not _that_ hard to pass as a regular civilian if you know what they're looking for."

Jon stops to take a breath, absorb, stare at a crack in the sidewalk.

"This job is giving me an...unexpected relationship with police brutality."

"No shortage of forces to hate in your line of work. Just appreciate the conflicts you don't have to be privy to, right?"

"Right..."

The crack in the sidewalk comes up empty-handed on answers. Jon looks up.

"Are you...real?"

Gerry shrugs, the first unsure motion in his flesh and blood repertoire.

"More or less, it seems like."

"But I...burned your page, I--like you asked. Did I...did I take too _long_?" Coma or not, the familiar pang of guilt washes over Jon's paranoia: fights it for dominance.

"Soul doesn't live in the page of a book, Jon. That's one small kind of trap for a very, very big thing. Entities wouldn't want us so bad if we were just a wisp on the wind, right?" And the smile he gives this time is strained, the crack of skin at its edge betraying the ghost of his age.

"...I still don't trust you." Jon says flatly.

"I'd be surprised if you did."

"Right. Well. Right.

"...Goodbye." Turning on his heel, Jon slips his eyes back over Gerry on his way into the institute.

"I assume telling you not to follow me won't actually stop you?"

"Guess we'll see."

Jon doesn't look behind him until he reaches his desk.

The feeling that passes over him when Gerry isn't there is impossible to parse.

* * *

No one has seen Gerry at the institute.

Jon's not _stupid_  -- he doesn't go around _asking_  for the reincarnated corpse of Gerard Keay -- just tries to find out if "anyone followed him in" or if any "odd characters" have been lurking around. Just thought he was being followed, was all, and you can never be too careful in this line of work.

Luckily for Jon, his coworkers rarely have the energy for the paranoia undercutting his clumsy lying.

No we haven't, Jon.

If you're going to do something stupid, at least do it with a little more subtlety.

Jon is significantly more agitated when he returns to his desk after that.

* * *

He spots Gerard, two days later, at a café.

He is seated in the heart of the room, mug in hand, and a barista with a folded apron chats with him mildly. He looks less out of place than Jon would have guessed, his figure somewhat less imposing in a rickety wooden chair than looming over Jon in an alleyway, and Jon watches the small laugh that releases both Gerard and the barista from their compulsory chat. He moves on, briskly, as the conversation ends, but the image does not leave his mind for the rest of the day.

* * *

"Um, Jon? There's someone here who wants to meet you but he, ah, he's very adament about not needing to give a statement. Is he--is everything alright?"

Jon sighs, taxation and relief the kindling of his momentum,

"Yes, Rosie. Send him down."

* * *

Jon doesn't need to look up to know when he arrives.

"Hello, Gerry."

"Morning. How'd you enjoy your days off?"

"My days _off?_ " The look Jon gives him is bleary, morning-soaked as he looks up.

"--ah. From you."

"Bingo. I figured I couldn't really wait on you to come and find me, and the great eyeball in the sky didn't exactly give me any spending money."

"So you've come here."

"You got it."

The sigh Jon delivers is deep, belaboured as he looks up at Gerry hovering in the door frame.

"...Would you like a cup of coffee?"

"Yes _please_."

Gerry offers a ghost of his toothy grin as he finally slips past the door, slides the flimsy chair accross Jon's desk out enough to plop himself into. Jon fails his attempts to subtley keep an eye on Gerry so spectacularly, Gerry has to stifle a laugh.

"You know I was wandering around for half a week without your supervision, right? Really think keeping an eye on me is necessary?"

"This is different. You're in the archives now."

There is a soft pause, accented by the clinking of spoon against ceramic as Jon mixes the bland instant coffee in a slow circle,

"In _my_ archives."

It's barely audible, but Gerard attends, chin on hand as he leans on the desk and watches. Jon lets himself focus on the methodical swirl of hot blackened water, allows himself to _feel_ Gerry rather than seeing him as he watches the steady motion of his own hand. Gerard watches the soft movement of his arm against the sharp outline of his body, sits in the groggy moment of Jon's morning inattention while he waits.

"How do you take it?"

"Cream. Two sugars."

"It...will have to be _creamer,_ unless you want to walk up to the proper kitchen."

There is a beat, too long for Jon's comfort, and he looks up to catch Gerry's heavy lids and piqued eyebrows.

"I'm not doing much else, Jon."

"Right. Well. I suppose I am the one who offered."

Steam hits the dome of the saucer before it's trapped, swirling in the heat between ceramic and solution. There is a gentle jitter between his palms as he walks it over, steady feet with unsteady hands.

"I can carry the cargo if it's that much trouble, you know." A hand slips over the saucer, under the cup, pulls them gentle from the Archivist's rattling palms,

"Since you're navigating."

Jon just crosses his now-idle hands, sets a brisk pace for Gerry to follow as he makes his way out.

"Fancy cup. Saucer and everything. I'm really getting the royal treatment, here."

"You'll find one thing the archives have no shortage of is antiques,"

Gerard reads the hint of a smile into Jon's quip, pulls into a grin behind his back.

"I thought we had a kitschy 'World's Beat Boss' mug around, but I think Tim just thought about it so often I started picking it up peripherally..."

"Tim?"

"Yes."

The rest of the walk upstairs is silent.

* * *

The kitchen is nestled at the helm of the staircase, bordered by clutter and un-dusted mahogany. Jon grips the doorframe as he leads Gerry in, casts an investagatory glance over his shoulder for good measure before he pulls open the fridge.

"These are all expired." It's more self-directed grumbling, and Jon is methodically pulling cartons and tupperware out of the unit before tossing them definitely into the bin behind him. Gerry watches, wonders if his purpose is just to soak up the mundane minutia of the Archivist: study how quickly he moves from one source of frustration to the next.

"Christ. There,"

The carton is dropped, with no small hint of agitation, onto the kitchen counter. Gerry frees the mug from its saucer prison and places both on the counter, pulling his wandering hair back over his shoulder with two thick arms. The tinkling of the spoon in the ceramic pit is rhythmic as Gerry pulls it back and forth through the newfound layers of fat, grinds the sugar gently into the bottom of the cup. Jon has been watching the irregular beat Gerry stirs into the cup, trying to catch onto the whisper of melody his fingers tap on the counter.

"So, you still need to eat and drink in this form, then."

"Oh, no. Not all all."

"What?"

This finally breaks Gerry, ripping a laugh out of his newly-formed throat as his head rockets back. His hair is a swirling jumble down his spine, twitching in time with his laughter.

"I promise I still benefit from a cup of coffee in the morning, Jon. I'm sure you didn't think this was a source of essential nutrients for me."

"Unbelievable." There is a moment of furious squinting at Gerry, then an abrupt move to return downstairs. Gerry is still grinning as he pulls the mug up to his mouth, holding the saucer flat in his other hand.

* * *

"Any theories on my mysterious apparition yet, Archivist?" Gerry has dropped himself back into the chair he's claimed at the front of Jon's desk, watching as Jon scrambles discordantly through a box at his feet.

"I've got a statement to read," is all Jon supplies in response, an edge to the frantic tone on his tongue that feels almost apologetic. The hand that hits 'record' on his tape player is clumsy, uncoordinated, and Jon drops himself into an off-centre squat in his chair before straightening himself out.

Interesting.

Deep breath in, shuddering exhale, before the Archivist launches his solidified tone forward.

"Statement of Monica Palmer, regarding a disturbing encounter at a concert venue during the summer of 2008. Original statement given October 3rd of the same year. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, The Archivist.

"Statement begins."

The voice that peels out of Jon next is pitchy, clipped, and he floats through the details of the statement with all the appropriately-placed inward chuckles and troubled pauses it necessitates.

Gerry's mug is paused on his lip as he watches the Archivist. In theory, Gerard understands the way a statement can possess someone, the way it hollows out an archivist as they ride the high of the experience. But to watch the switch flip with such intensity on such a nervous, agitated character of an archivist is hard to resist the intrigue of. His eyes trace the outline of Jon, try to pick up the physicality of the experience as he finally pulls his sip of coffee forward from its rest stop on his lips. There is nothing he can find, however, besides the bewitching of muscle and the possession of mind as the woman's life runs a hot sprint through the Archivist's spirit.

Gerard's coffee is finished before the statement, and he sets it to one side, saucer neatly tucked under the thin, patterned china. He finds his eyes begging for focus, so he lets his eyelids drop, soaks up the animated soliloquy of the Archivist as a sole sensory experience.

"You know, I really should have realized sooner, that the way people around me pressing in on me wasnt-- _normal,_  even for a show that big, but it just felt like a big, active crowd, right? You know, I'm five-nothing, so when I'm squeezed in tight by a bunch of people who don't see me there I'm kind of--used to it, you know? That pressing in from people too rude to look down and see if there's someone there, but..."

Jon bites his lip here, self-conscious tic and the shy tuck of hair behind his ear Gerry is sure would never pass through him in his day to day life. The soft vulnerability of a girl forced to question her own judgement so often that the telling of distored reality boils with timid shame,

"But then I _heard_ her, Hayley, just -- _screaming_ my name, and why could I hesr her? How could I have heard her over any of that? And then I realized there was no-- no _music_ any more, just the breathing of the people around me, and -- and when I looked up, I...I couldn't see the _end_  of them. It was just arms and chests and necks up as far as I could see, and-- and pressing into me, no, _crushing_ me, my hair caught on one of them and pulling so painfully on my head I thought I was going to burst and-- and I tried to yell back, to say something to her, too, but, I _couldn't_. No matter how hard I tried to scream, to call something back to her, I was just gasping on air, choking and wheezing and my voice wasn't saying _anything_ no matter how sure I was that my voice was forcing words out...why could she speak? How was she still yelling, still _breathing_  when I couldn't? I still don't know. All I know is I did what I've always done at shows when it gets too much, when there's a weird guy who won't leave me alone or I realize one of my bows fell off or I dropped a bracelet somewhere along the way -- I drop to my knees and retrace my steps, and I just hope I don't get kicked. I figured whatever was happening -- _who_ ever the crowd had become and whatever was happening there, they were probably still like a normal crowd -- too busy looking and feeling the scene around them to notice a little bump on their legs as I crawled past. And I actually -- you know I _did_ actually find a bow that had dropped off my head on the way back, funny enough. Didn't even realized I'd lost it, thought I guess it makes sense why I didn't. It's hard, though, to think about, wonder if--if that's the small thing that helped me back, or if it's the trade I'd had to make for my best friend..."

Jon's breath hitches, changes tempo, signaling Gerry's eyes to flutter back open and re-adjust to the interior of the room.

A deep sigh out through his nose: focused, composed as he stares at the last line on the page,

"...Statement ends."

"Feeling better?"

A flicker of surprise over the Archivist's eyes as he remembers he's not alone, looks up with renewed focus at his undead guest,

"I'm-- yes. Yes, I always tend to, after..."

"Figured. You were getting pretty shaky there. A little early for that psychic hair of the dog, don't you think?"

"That isn't-- most people don't respond well to having their routines disrupted, Gerry. Ususally I don't have quite so much distraction before I sit down to do these."

"I could have survived with creamer, you know."

"...Right." The Archivist's nerves return, forcing his hand up to the back of his next as he bites the inside of his cheek: tries to brush past the surreal feeling of friendly jabs with the undead. He turns, instead, back to the statement, pulls his focus back into that rehearsed and affected drawl,

"Again, no real investigation to be done on this one. I've tried to track down Ms. Palmer for follow-up, but her trail of addresses led to a dead end after her last known place of residence in Whitehaven: 78 Basket Road. Her last employer was similarly unaware of her current place of work, as she left with no notice or warning in August of 2009. No matter how disturbing she found the events that she came to us about, I find it hard not to worry about Ms. Palmer's disappearance as an indication she may be someone we have to worry about in the future. Whether this is simply me courting the idea of my own bad luck or an actual moment of insight remains to be seen, I suppose. I'm not particularly invested in giving into the urge to See the results of a dead-end statement from 2008, tempting though it may be.

"I just can't help but find it pertinent that Hayley Dower was, accoring to all records I could dig up, found dead in Wastwater lake on September 9th, 2009. While her body showed significant evidence of decay, she wasn't found washed up on shore or weighed down at the bottom of the body of water. Instead, the diver that found her reported she was floating _significantly_  deeper under the surface of the lake than should have been possible for a month-old corpse: almost one hundred and thirty metres deep. Her body was severely decayed and corroded except for a pair of lungs that, according to the diver, were still breathing steadily in and out at the time of discovery.

"End recording."

Jon presses down on the tape recorder's well-worn button, forcing the spinning tape to a stop as he completes his daily ritual. Pulling his hand through his hair, he gives the statement one final evaluation before putting it to the side, leaning on his arm as he grabs his cup of coffee.

The face he makes when he takes a sip tells Gerry it hasn't been warm for quite some time.

"That good, huh?"

"Ususally I try to finish what I'm drinking before I record a statement...a cup of coffee can really get _alarmingly_ cold if you let it."

He takes another sip despite this, face only betraying his distaste slightly this time. He finishes it unsentimentally, sliding it to one end of the table occupied by scribbled notes and an old, dusty lamp.

"You've got no assistants, then? I know Gertrude ususally kept enough backups for when she was going to send one of them off to their unwitting end. You should try that, if you're running out of employees so fast."

"People are not things I want to keep _spares_ of." His tone is sharp, defensive. The hand holding his head tenses up, if only for a moment,

"And I _do_ have assistants, I think...just, not ones who are in any real position to help at the moment..."

"Good on you for that, I guess. A little more sentimental than old Gerty, at least. And, then...maybe we're getting to the bottom of what I'm here for, aren't we?"

This catches the Archivist in a moment of promise, swings his eyes, his head back up to rest on Gerry. There is the faintest wisp of space between his parted lips, the ghost of an, "oh".

"I...don't think we've decided that I'm all that...comfortable with whatever reason you're here yet."

"Didn't stop you from letting me wander around for four days, did it? Who's to say you could really stop me from going out and doing my own investigating?"

"That isn't-- well, no _money_ while you're wandering around out there, right? You-- you wouldn't actually be able to do all _that_  much damage...although you don't actually need to eat, do you? And sleeping...is that something you still need to do, as well?"

"Not sure, honestly. I've just been dropping off for it when I get bored. Couldn't tell you if anything bad happens if I didn't."

"Right..."

"You do realize you could just... _compell_ me, don't you? Yank some answers out of me if you're all that concerned?"

"I don't think that's-- oh actually, hold on--"

Jon is up, quickly, sprung from his chair and bouncing on the balls of his feet to a nearby archive shelf.

"Hold on, hold on..."

He's still, then, as he closes his eyes and breathes in, lifts an arm to float over the boxes and books haphazardly piled onto the shelves before hovering over one on his right, floating softly over the lid.

"Right. This would be it, then."

Slipping the box off the shelf, Jon clutches it to his chest as he walks back over, dropping it onto his desk as he hovers over its contents. Lifting the lid gently off and laying it to the side, he runs his fingers over the jumble of statements until his hand hits one near the centre,

"Ah,"

And pulls out a folder with Gerard's name written tidily on the front, puntuated with the statement's associated date. Jon spreads it out on top of the box, sifting through the contents gingerly until his hand meets a set of polaroids, and lifts them up to either side of Gerry's head.

"Well, I suppose that _does_ ease my residual fears about you being a Stranger avatar, even if you look...significantly older."

" _Significantly_? I've still got feelings, you know, undead or not."

"That's-- not a bad thing! You just look...a lot younger, is all. Angier, too."

"Yeah, well. I was angry."

Jon pulls them closer, studies them for a moment. They were unquestionably snapped without his knowledge, or at least without his consent, and the even cut on the bottom of Gerard's hair along with the splatter of zits running along both cheeks betrays his youth in the photos.

"Sixteen..." It comes out soft as he looks at the angry teenage iteration of his new accomplice, although no age is actually written.

"So this would be-- three years before your trip to Pall Mall, correct? And the -- and when you came into contact with-- well, I _assumed_  it was a Leightner..."

Gerry tries, fails to maintain a veneer of frustration at the Archivist's lack of social decorum as he watches the way his eyes focus and dart with the exciting synthesis of information. He remembers the way Gertrude's would do the same -- distorted as they were by her advanced age as an Archivist. But when they were alone, hotel rest-stop or the back of a van, she would sometimes pull off her sunglasses and let her eyes really _fly_ with the ectasy of information, and Gerard would always have to look away so he could pretend not to be impressed.

He's finding that the new Archivist zones out _far_ too wildly for him to have to worry about that.

"Yeah, that one was a Stranger tome - I know I read the name, _tons_  of times, could never remember it though, no matter how many times I went back and checked. Thought about writing it down once, but that seemed like a _really_ bad idea. Had an author, though: Sine Nomine."

"Ah! That's a common one, 'Without A Name'."

"Sure is. I really wonder if some entity is writing these feeling _hysterically_  clever, or if it's just a manifestation without direction, pulling from our common concepts."

"That's-- quite interesting, actually...I can't imagine they'd all be the _same_ , though, w-would you? I'd assumed there were probably...different methods of creating them, different ways for them to pass into being."

"Can't necessarily poke a hole in that theory from what I've seen. Mum always figured they were from some great _event_ , some culminating ritual of manifestation. I didn't bother trying to fight her on it, though I think her theory was bunk, frankly.

"That's the one I gave her, by the way, if you're having fun comparing statments. A little synthesis of information for you."

"Oh, yes, that--that makes sense." Gerry watches the soft rapture of the Archivist's expression, the way his eyes trace over his glasses between one unseen piece of information and the next, before widening suddenly, popping back into reality: onto Gerry.

"Oh. I'm--I'm sorry. I guess that's not a... _fun_ walk down memory lane for you."

"Don't be. It's always fun seeing the way you guys get twisted up in information. For all-powerful entities, Archivists really are sort of...space cases."

Cheeks pressed in a wide smile, and Jon moves to counter before dipping back into himself, betraying the faint ghost of a smile in turn,

"I...suppose that's true. Gertrude was like this, too?"

"Oh, not nearly as bad. Don't know if that's because she practiced or if you're just more of a space cadet than she was, though. But she _would_  get kind of misty-eyed when things really started to come together. It was sort of endearing, honestly, if you took it in tandem with the rest of her."

"R-right." Jon's nervous hands fiddle over the papers in front of him, rest on top of the slip of parchment in the folder sitting atop the box.

"Gerry, do you remember...is this a statement here, one from 1999?"

Gerard shrugs. "Wouldn't be that surprised. Truth be told things from that long ago are a bit of a blur, supernatural or not."

"I suppose that's not surprising."

Jon fidgets with the corner of it, eyes cast down to where his skin meets the page as he fusses it, undecided. The look he gives Gerry then is open, vulnerable, with the smallest twitch of nerve on his mouth as he asks,

"Would you mind if I...read this? You could -- you're free to leave the room if you'd like, if it'd be...weird."

"Thought you were keeping an eye on me?"

"Well, I also thought you might be a Stranger avatar, but I'm sure that's not true now. I'm really not fond of them in particular."

"Can't say I blame you, there. Go ahead. I'm not going anywhere, though."

A quick flinch of eyebrows, then a glance back down to the back of the statement in his hands. Jon lifts the folder off of its resting place on the box, moving the box to the floor and seating himself back in his chair with the folder resting, open, in front of him. He places his finger in the familiar groove of the 'record' button and takes a deep breath, pressing it down.

"Statement of Gerard Keay, 1999, regarding a, uh..." Gerard catches a soft flutter of parchment as Jon turns the page over,

"Ah. A massive pen drawing of a penis."

A grin crawls over Gerry's face, splits his teeth out from behind his lips.

"Oh, I remember that one." A soft laugh, then, to himself,

"Thought I'd express something about mom that day, but...I came in, and I could feel the same kind of forces, you know? Different energy, but...the same, at their core. So I got pissed off and left them that. Really spent my time scribbling it so they'd think I was working on something _really_ good in there, too. I'm sort of surprised they kept it, honestly."

"Yes, we're not really in the business of destroying information here, uh, _abstract_  as it may be." Jon puts the statement aside as if it's contaminated,

"I suppose it saves me some exhaustion, anyway." He resolves, clicking the tape to a stop once again.


	2. ii. Viv

“So, like I said: any theories yet?"

The Archivist’s mouth mimes a confused ‘theories’ before a clumsy, “What?” tumbles out of it instead.

“On me. I have to assume you’re not taking it for granted that I’m just here to socialize.”

“Was– was I supposed to be theorizing?”

“You tell me. You’re the one who’s worried about my motives here.”

“It’s not necessarily… _your_ motives I don’t trust.”

“Noted. But, really, isn’t Archivist work all about security and protection through knowledge? You’re not a little eager to sink those brain teeth into this occult conundrum?”

“Security…and protection. Is that really my main purpose?”

“Like I’ve said, no clue. Not sure Gerty got an instruction manual, either. But with how much info you’re pulling in, _investigating_ for stopping apocalyptic threats to your world order, it’s clearly a pretty central role. The eye’s not exactly an offensive style of entity, it stands to reason a lot of knowledge you gather has to necessarily be for your protection, right?”

“Yes, we…we _have_ had a lot of attacks from the other entities…I’m not entirely sure I’ve even heard about every incident from when I was gone…”

Jon moves his eyes over the desk, studying the grain of the wood and the mass of clutter littered over its surface as he re-arranges internal information. There is a soft slump of his shoulders as he lays one of his hands over the other, gives Gerry a look bordered with quiet distress.

“You understand…a lot more about this than I do, don’t you?”

“Seems like it. Or at least I’m a better guesser than you are. Don’t be too hard on yourself, though. You’re still new at it. Takes a while to get used to a new job, I’d figure. Gertrude’d been at it for a while.”

“Yes…I can’t say _Elias_ was much help, I wouldn’t rank cryptic instructions and the occasional statement delivery particularly high on my list of 'meaningful contributions’.”

“Should I assume you’re responsible for his jail time, then?”

“Er, not–not _directly_. And we didn’t try and get him arrested for his lackluster managerial abilities…”

“No judgement if you had.”

A shocked laugh pops out of Jon at this, a short, pitchy exclamation that catches both he and Gerry by surprise.

“Careful. Might start trusting me if you’re already laughing at my jokes.”

“I’m allowed to have a sense of humour _and_ a healthy level of skepticism towards the undead, Gerry.”

“Right, sure, totally doesn’t seem like a sign I’m already getting you with my posthumous charm.”

Gerry shifts in his chair, then, produces a small pad of paper that he he quickly begins to flips through,

“Anyway, that was one of my theories, actually. Thought I might be here for guidance since your regular boss is in wage theft time-out over there.”

“I’m sorry, you were– taking _notes_?”

“It’s good to write things down. You should know that better than anyone, I’d have thought. Then you get _all_ the fun of reading it later. Would you believe I got sent back with a notepad and pen and I didn’t even get to keep my coat?”

“You know, that…doesn’t actually surprise me.” Jon sighs, resigns himself to the idea of a malevolent god equipping its avatars with school supplies.

“Well, _I’m_ not too happy about it. Ah, here it is, see?”

The page Gerry flips up is covered in tight, neat handwriting, with bits of shorthand clipping its length. Jon is surprised by how _tidy_ it is, although the doodle in one corner betrays more of the messy energy he’d anticipated from Gerry. Leaning in closer, he realizes the doodled figure bears an alarming resemblance to the Archivist in question, with angrily scribbled glasses and a stringy mess of hair.

“Is that…supposed to be _me_?”

“You tell me.”

There are a few small swirls dotting parts of his face Jon was sure his bug bites had healed from, and written on an arrow connected to his head are the emphatic words, 'this whole situation’. The number of floating question marks denoting his confusion are, the Archivist thinks, a _bit_ excessive.

“This might border on…endearing, if it weren’t so obnoxious.”

“Ah, so it’s a faithful rendering, then.”

A reluctant red heat peels up the Archivist’s face, reddening the tops of his ears as he tries to even out his frown.

“Cute.”

“I _don’t_ think–”

“Hey, Jon, can I ask you something quick– oh, sorry. Didn’t know you were taking a statement.”

“It’s _fine_ , Basira. What can I help you with?”

“It’s really not urgent, I can come back if–”

“No it’s–it’s fine, really. We’re almost done here. What do you need?”

“He’s full of it. I’m gonna be here for a some time, I think.” Gerry leans over in his chair, sticks his hand out in the dusty air of the archives.

“Gerard Keay. You’re one of the new set of archival assistants, then?”

Basira ignores the hand, turns to Jon.

“You’re hiding the guy who’s in _half_ the statements in the archives down here? What hilariously bad plan is _this_ a part of?”

“We were trying to figure that out, too.” Gerry beams.

“So your crackpot theory he was alive actually panned out? Why am I only hearing about this now?”

“I didn’t–did I talk to _you_ about that?”

“Didn’t have to. You ramble in here, Jon. A _lot_.”

“R-right, well, that’s– right.”

“You really faked your own death, huh? That do anything for you?” Basira turns to Gerry now, oblivious to his still hovering hand.

“Well, I’m back here getting interrogated by archival staff who won’t shake my hand, so you tell me.”

“Oh, uh– sorry.” Basira quickly tucks her stack of books under one arm, finally grabbing the offered hand and shaking.

“Basira Hussain. Nice to meet you. Now, Jon,”

She turns before her hand is released, refuses to let too much of her time be taken up with belated greetings.

“You read that Connor Dally statement a few days back, right? Mind looking at these and telling me if they feel familiar? If you _see_ anything or whatever?”

She pulls her hand out of Gerard’s, drops the small stack of books on the table between them,

“You see these, here, of that park ranger from the statement? I thought it was just the quality of these old photos, you know, that sort of spotted look? But you can see here it… _moves_ along their face. Like their covered in–”

“…Canvas. Yes.” Jon breathes, runs his finger over the large photo nearest to him, tracing the lines of the subject’s face.

“I just… _nothing_ about that statement felt like the Stranger to me, Jon, so why is the principal subject from it made out of something besides _skin_?”

“And it couldn’t be the Flesh since it’s not…flesh.”

“Yeah, Jon. Kind of figured that one out myself.”

“You asked for my help, sorry if it’s a bit redundant for you while I run through the options.”

“Can’t run through the obvious ones in your head?”

“Archivists like to think out loud.” Gerry pitches in, not hiding his amusement at the conversation.

“Alright. And I like to give them a little shit for it, then.” She cuts a small smile at this, although Jon is oblivious. Gerard shoots a grin back.

“Can’t fault you there, I guess.”

“The web, Basira…have you looked at that? I mean if it’s– if it’s _sewn_ together like this– it’s manipulated thread, isn’t it?”

“So the web can _make_ people now? That’s not encouraging. Thought that was just stranger territory.”

“Yes, well, until recently so did I.”

“And what’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn I have no interest in sharing just yet.”

“Course. Don’t know why I bother coming down, frankly.”

The curve of a smile threatens Jon’s lip, Basira similarly bites her cheek.

“I promise I’ll talk to you about it when I figure it out a bit more, Basira.”

“Counting on it. I assume tall, dark and spooky is here to help you with whatever that is?”

“I could be short. I haven’t stood up yet.”

“Right.” And Basira does peel into a grin this time before turning towards the door.

“Nice meeting you. Try and keep him from doing anything stupider than usual, alright?”

“What–” She is gone before Jon can try and counter.

“You almost got the last word in, too. Not gonna tell your underlings you’re hosting the undead just yet?”

“She’s not an _underling_. And trust me when I say she’d be even less inclined to trust you than I am.”

“Paranoid bunch. ”

“Yes, well. Get constantly attacked and repeatedly kidnapped for a few years straight, you pick up a bit of a habit. Do I get to get any _work_ done today, or am I scheduled for reincarnated investigation for the rest of the morning?”

“Told you I could help you investigate. That’d get me out of your hair.”

“But you don’t want to, do you? You want to be _here_ , with _me_.” Jon’s frown burrows into the scribbled paper still laid out in front of him, pen tapping the table beside him in increasing irritation.

“I don’t _want_ to be here, you realize? Didn’t cross your mind I might not have come here just to enjoy your company?” And there is an edge to his voice, finally, the slipping of his amiability as he banters uselessly with the newbie Archivist. Finally Jon pulls up from his irritated tapping, squares with Gerry’s stare. The pen in his hand slows, then stops.

“You… _have_ to be here.”

“There we go. Finally a little practical analysis of the situation, huh?” The edge to his voice remains, his lips pulled back down from their earlier grin. The look Jon receives now is impatient, somewhat weary.

“If I…look through these, can I have a moment of– could I have a bit of silence? Please?” There is a soft whisper of pleading to the edge of the question, and Gerry’s shoulders drop, exhausted resignation.

“Sorry– sorry, yeah.” He leans one arm on the desk, looks to the window on the east side of the archives.

“Gerty didn’t always like to talk, either, I figured she might– figured she was just kind-of standoffish, I guess.”

There is Jon’s requested silence, interrupted only by the flutter of paper as he flips a page of Gerry’s notes.

“She might have been.” Jon concedes, quiet, spoken down into the wood of the desk,

“I never met her.”

And there is something he feels the breadth of, the distance between pieces disconnected, but he is used to the churning of this roulette of feeling, and he ignores it. And when he looks up at Gerry, expecting a reply, he is surprised to see him leaning on his arm with his eyes closed, breathing in and out with the even tempo of sleep.

* * *

Jon makes good on his promise to flip through Gerry’s notes, although it’s not before he takes his time properly investigating that morning’s statement. Laptop open beside him, newspaper clippings littering his desk, and two empty cups of tea leaving wet rings on loose pages, he runs to the end of research he can conduct on his own. There’s little supplementary information to bother recording over, so he allows himself the requisite relaxation to pick up Gerry’s notes and begin tabbing through them.

He’s still impressed with the tidiness of the handwriting, although some of the underlining strikes him as _needlessly aggressive_. Some of the shorthand he’d noticed earlier is unfamiliar to him, as well, and a cursory moment of focus doesn’t bring any new information forward for him to work with. He wonders if it was necessary, working with Gertrude, to formulate a coded way of speaking and writing, and immediately starts to scribble his own notes on the subject before his eyes have hit the end of the first page. He tries not to imagine a quip from Gerry about the scratch of his handwriting qualifying as a cipher when his pen hits the paper, but his mind supplies it readily regardless.

There is esoteric knowledge in Gerry’s notes that Jon finds fascinating, as well: allusions to figures and ritual sites that he’s unfamiliar with, and a page of expounding on different iterations of Darkness that Gerry apparently felt the need to ramble about in the middle of another thought. There are also what clearly amount to bored doodles littering the corners of many of the pages, including a hideously clumsy illustration of the barista he’d seen Gerry with a few days prior. Jon makes a mental note to take it easy on the burgeoning undead artist, acknowledges that he could at least _identify_ the subject of the drawing – even if it was rendered in that same endearingly unpracticed hand as the rest of Gerry’s art.

When the book descends into ink-splattered drawings of the same three coffee cups and a few crude sketches bordering on _pornographic_ , Jon decides he’s probably reached the end of Gerry’s constructive temporal expenditure, and flips the notepad closed. Gerry is still unconscious in front of him, although he’s slumped into a _much_ less convincing facsimile of someone just resting their eyes.

The Archivist takes a moment, then, to take in the minutia of his recent archive guest. He’d already picked up his somewhat surprising amount of muscle in both his book- and flesh-bound iterations, although his arms and shoulders still clearly carry enough fat to surrender to the hard desk they rest. Hair a deep black and clearly artificially died – an interesting attribute of his resurrection, and Jon tries not to laugh too loudly at a private joke about Gerry spending his first day of reincarnation buying drug store box dye. The makeup is a bit of a surprise, although theoretically it fit into his reputation as a wandering goth in the pursuit of the occult. It isn’t an amount that Jon finds _distasteful_ , just a subtle smear of black eye shadow and a pat of something purple on his bottom lip that has been more or less ruined by having his face buried in the crook of his arm. Jon’s mind unhelpfully supplies the brand of eye shadow without any prompting, as well as the last time Gerry bought it before he died, as well as the fact that the clerk who sold it to him had been taking the same subway to work as her biological father for the last three years without knowing. The lack of insight to be gleaned from this spark of information is particularly grating as he takes in the sleeping form of Gerry, wondering what his body is actually made of.

“Can’t have anything too _useful_ leak out for my benefit,” it’s to himself he mutters this, eyes scanning over the ink on Gerard’s exposed skin as he does so. He recognizes the small eyes glancing up at him from Gerry’s knuckles from statement descriptions, but there are several less familiar ones peeking out the bottoms of his sleeves as well. Jon squints at the bottom of a large skull partially obscured by the hem of Gerry’s shirt, struggling to read the text scribbled beneath it as if it has some deep arcane significance. It absolutely does not, he realizes: it’s a band logo. As he starts to realize how many of the black ink shapes crawling up Gerry’s arm are the copyright of esoteric metal groups, he has to bite his tongue before a shocked yelp of a laugh pops out of him, wakes up his slumbering subject of study.

Some of them are _unquestionably_ newer than others, he decides, now getting a closer look at them than when he first met Gerry outside. The ink is bumped up in a way he recognizes from Georgie’s, all swirling dark ink over her shoulder that she was happy to let him run a finger over when it had finally healed. He missed the texture of it, frankly, the bump of skin he could trace in the dark and still understand the nature of. He has to stop himself from poking one of the _particularly_ enticing looking bumps of ink on Gerry’s arm, as much as it looks like a fulfilling tactile experience. It’s definitely rude to just poke people’s tattoos, right? He’s sure he remembers that _absolutely_ being the case.

Gerry wakes up when Jon’s curiosity gets the better of him, catches Jon clumsily attempting to poke his sleeve up with the butt of a pen to get a better look.

“Looks like you’ve been productive.” It’s a hoarse grumble, spoken halfway into his elbow.

“I, ah– I looked at your notes.”

“And?”

“Um, oh, I took some–some of my own as well, um–”

“Eugh, forget that, actually. You got a cigarette?”

“Oh! Yes, I’ve, uh–”

Jon pulls the pack from his pocket, half-crushed against his leg and in serious danger of bending every cigarette contained therein in half. He pulls out one of the slightly less crumpled ones and hands it to Gerry.

“I assume I’m not smoking this in a room full of wood and old paper?” Gerry pulls a still-groggy smile at Jon’s horrified expression in response.

“Alright, chaperone. Lead the way.”

* * *

“Alright. Put some information together. Tell me what you’ve got.” Gerry is leaning over Jon’s hands, tip of the lighter’s flame hitting the end of his cigarette as Jon shields it from the wind.

“Is this _really_ necessary?” Jon grumbles, watching as Gerry’s hair whips dangerously close to the open flame.

“You do trust me with a lighter? I could be made out of something flammable, you know.”

“Oh! Y–yes, that was one thing I was meaning to ask you about, actually. So you don’t know what exactly this…re-incarnated you is made out of?”

“Nope. Wanna stab me?”

A flinch from Jon, half a step taken backwards, “Why…would I want to _stab_ you?”

Gerry shrugs. “Pent-up aggression?”

“I think…there are more _productive_ ways we could probably investigate that…” He trails off as he struggles to imagine them. Thin wisps of smoke form uselessly on out the end of his cigarette as it pauses on his lip, sucked away by the wind as he thinks.

“Actually, before that I wanted to ask you about– your notes, they had a _lot_ of info about things I hadn’t heard of, aspects of the entities I hadn’t heard of and– well, still haven’t I guess. Just read about.”

“Just theories. Kinda had some trains of thought I never got to work out, what with the sudden onslaught of brain decomposition. Don’t take it as gospel. Especially since I didn’t really mean for you to backread.”

“Oh! Sorry, I uh– figured I ought to be _thorough_ …the art was an interesting touch, as well.”

“Be nice.” Gerard smirks, slides an eye over to Jon, “It’s been a while since I had hands. I’m a little rusty.”

“Oh, no, it’s– the penmanship was nice.”

“God, that’s a _tragically_ limp save, Archivist. Printing’s a whole different part of the spirit, you know. What we express and how we express don’t come from a unified source.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Things come out of different parts of you, is all. Where you store these things and pull from. Some of it’s pretty surface level, you know? Nice lines, tidy writing. What speaks through you and how, if you’re allowed any organization, if the shit you’re trying to express gets real _primordial_ …you’ll start to find the human ability to capture it wavers.”

“Sort of a lot of…fanfare for a couple drawings of coffee cups, isn’t it?” Jon asks before he can catch himself.

“…Like I said, I’m rusty.”

“No! It’s– it’s interesting, really, I, ah…what were your theories about The Web? I couldn’t actually, um, parse all the shorthand…”

“Got an awful lot of questions for a thing you don’t trust.”

“ _You_ wanted me to talk to you–”

“You’re pretty easy, huh? That’s what you get for going through my notes to pick on my pen drawings.”

There’s a slight bristle over the Archivist at this revelation, and he pulls an angry drag in response.

“Anyway, it’s not shorthand. Or, it is? I skip letters a lot. Kinda just started leaning into it.”

“I suppose that explains why I didn’t recognize the system…”

“Don’t worry, it’s all in here.” Gerard taps his temple thoughtfully, points his head towards Jon,

“Here, let me just beam it to you.”

“That’s not– don’t do that.” Jon fumbles, subconsciously ducking away from the imagined psychic stream. Gerry snorts.

“Anyway, it’s not necessarily anything that has anything to do with the web in its current state. It was just one of those ones that never sat right with me, you know? Being manipulated by a spider, it’s…that’s not _really_ how they do things, is it? I’m not sure I associate the insect equivalent of putting some leaves over a hole in the ground with expertise in manipulation, so…it keeps gnawing at me. Making me feel like…like they’ve _changed_. What was it about spiders that formed this connection so strongly, right? What relationship did humans used to have with them that some part of us feels so… _controlled_?”

Jon holds his cigarette, paused between drags, considers the ideas as his ember sputters in the breeze.

“Do bugs feel fear? I mean if– if we’ve got _animal_ fears then, logically…?”

“I don’t know if insects– if they _fear_ like that. Though I guess I can’t accuse it of being the most human entity.”

“Well, I mean– you know it’s the biggest population on earth, right? And the oldest?”

“I’m sorry…What?”

“Um, bugs? They’re, uh, the outnumber us quite significantly. Been around for a bit longer, too? Could be their fears are, uh, baked into the earth for a lot longer than ours, couldn’t it?”

Gerard looks down at this, holds his fingers to his lips as the concepts wash over him.

“Jesus. And when an insect fear gets adopted by humans for a few hundred, hell, a few thousand years?”

“Yes! I suppose things could get, ah…get weird.”

There is a breath of silence between them, the mild afterglow of productive conversation, as they finish their cigarettes and collect their thoughts. Neither judges the other for sucking smoke down until filter starts to burn, filling the air around them with the quick whip of burning cotton.

“Christ. No wonder I let Gertrude do most of this. Kind of an eerie sort of work, isn’t it?”

“Well, in–in a way, but…isn’t it sort of nice? To put some if it together?”

“Easy, eyeball freak.”

“At least I’m not covered in _tattoos_ of the bloody things,” Jon grumbles into the air without conviction.

“Alright, alright, don’t _deflate_ over there. I promise you’re allowed to think the spooky spectres are neat.”

“So, you’re…not keen on investigating, then? Any, ah- any of it?”

“I never really thought about it when I had no choice, it’s kind of part of the territory, isn’t it? Guess I could probably stand to relax now, couldn’t I? If I’m _allowed_ to, anyway.”

“Er, right, it’s just–” Jon taps his chin, frowns, hugging his arms to his body in the mild chill,

“If we’re on the subject, perhaps– perhaps I _would_ like your help in investigating something.”

* * *

“Sorry, the 'investigating’ is a lid you can’t lift off of something?”

“It’s a two person job. I’m one person.”

“Can’t get miss Hussain to help you with this one?’

"We…tend to work separately.”

“Don’t trust her?”

Jon’s hands grip both sides of the marble slab topping the sarcophagus, hooking his fingers into the groove where they both meet. Gerry does the same, although with less belabored hesitation.

“ _She_ doesn’t trust _me_.” He clarifies, attempting to lift up the stone edge currently under his jurisdiction.

“Ah, now not trusting Archivists, there’s something I can relate to. Should of told me, me and her could really bond.”

“Although I’m sure it would vindicate some past paranoias, I’m not particularly keen on my archival staff bonding about their lack of trust in me.

"Didn’t say I don’t trust _you_ , just relate to the feeling on not trusting an archivist. Speaking of trusting you, are you sure this isn’t a _monumentally_ stupid idea?” Gerry’s hands are still flat on the marble lid, refusing Jon’s strained attempts to lift it.

“This isn’t something where the _opening_ of the artifact was the issue, I’m sure of that.” Jon wheezes, finally feeling the tug on his arm as Gerry relents and lifts his end,

“This statement– the sarcophagus being opened didn’t _initiate_ anything, it was only when they _touched_ what was inside–” The stone is still heavy, even with an extra hand, and Jon is interrupter by his own aggravated grunt as he and Gerry struggle to edge the lid off the side of its home.

“And you’re sure we’re not gonna be _compelled_ , are you? Beholding’s not immune to the pull of other entities, you know.”

“I’m aware. From the statement I read,” Another grunt as the lid slides a few paltry inches to one side, Gerry shouldering most of the work despite Jon’s pained exhalations.

“It’s almost like a sort of, taunting? Sort of like it’s _daring_ you. The, uh, statement giver described it as 'rude’ which is…sort of an interesting review of an artifact, frankly.”

Gerry chuckles, finally releasing a strained breath as he and Jon slide the sarcophagus lid far enough to the side to drop onto the floor, lean it on the side of their subject of investigation. There is a moment of catched breaths, of Jon pretending to pull less air into his lungs than he needs. Pulled together, he leans over the opening, jumping slightly as he catches the form within.

“A…snake?”

“It’s a _bullet chain_ , Jon.”

“Ah, yes that…that makes a bit more sense. So it was the Slaughter, then.” There is a soft tapping of his finger on his chin as he leans over, runs his eyes over the chain of bullets,

“I’d thought it’d been the desolation, what with the subject– this _heat_ that followed him apparently, people could feel it when he was around them.”

“Heat’s a friend of a lot of 'em. Oppressive conditions of war, right? Fire and ice, leave your enemies out to starve in the cold, burn their rations, make a town of civilians go up in flame…Distortion, too, heat stroke and that disorientating feeling that comes with it, or the spread of disease when warmth hits infection. Desolation doesn’t have exclusive rights to heat’s effects on us.”

“I…suppose your right.” Jon breathes, watches the focus in Gerard’s eyes as he stares into the casket, rattles off insights without pausing to think. There is a cohesion to Gerard’s understanding that comes from a life of immersion, impressive with an undercurrent of concerning.

“And it… _is_ snake-like, isn’t it? I suppose they live in warm climates…”

“ _Yes_ , Jon, your little jump was perfectly valid, don’t worry. I see it too. Like a demonic reptile exhibit.” And he _does_ see it, eyes rolling over the metal of the shells, the catch of light and the edge of shadow that tricks his eye when he stares for too long: the spine and soft muscle of an unending black reptile.

“Right. Well. That solves that, anyway.” Jon concludes, reaching down to pull the marble slab back up.

“Sorry, you came down here to check 'slaughter’ off a list, then just pop the top back on?”

“It’s important to know how these entities manifest. I don’t like having…unanswered questions about statements, if I can help it.”

“Sure. Sounds like it’s just a little bit of entity bingo in the artifact storage for the Archivist.” Despite the roll of Gerry’s eyes he reaches down, grabbing the other end of the lid as he helps Jon struggle to pick it back up.

* * *

“Alright, alright. How about this one?” Gerry is gesturing to a shallow bowl balanced on an ostentatious column to Jon’s left.

Jon looks up from his detritus hunt, fixing his eyes on the artifact in question.

“Desolation, I believe…American. Multi level marketing firm that either took everything in a more _conventional_ method or, um– dissolved you. If you did well. Sort of a final capitalist baptism ritual, or that’s what their sales pitch was.”

“God, that’s a fun one, isn’t it? Gertrude _never_ let me in to come poke around here. Who’s this?”

Jon does not look up, “I wouldn’t touch that unless you want to infect _every_ piece of electronic equipment you touch afterwards.” Then he does.

“Oh, I– didn’t know that one. ” He turns to look at it, then, a moldy data card on a shelf, sheltered from the world in a small plastic box.

He leans towards it, then, lets his eyes run over the distorted source of newfound knowledge.

“Sounds like you knew it _just_ fine. Corruption’s digitizing, is it?”

Jon cuts his eyes at Gerard at this, waning vestiges of paranoia, and turns back to his task at hand.

“Don’t…ask me about things I might not know about. I’ll need your _help_ over here, in a second– ah, here.”

There is the sound of shifting paper and folding cardboard, then, as Jon moves a jumble of collapses boxes and obsolete labels to reveal an off-kilter sculpture. Vaguely religious, indeterminate gender, with deep shadows in its stone drapery despite the dull glow of the overhead lights.

“Ah, ominous statue. Am I allowed to ask about _this_? Archivist can’t be too judgemental about curiosity, I’d have assumed.” Gerry leans a hand on the statue, leans over as he tries to catch the Archivist’s eye.

“Maybe I’m growing a bit _wary_ of another eye avatar continually asking me for information.” And he does slide his eyes over, for only a second, cold look flattened under thick glass. Then concedes,

“It’s the Dark. I _knew_ Martin knocked something over in here. Surprised it didn’t shatter and unleash something incomprehensible.” Jon’s cycle of irritation spins, rotates, returns. He bends over, bracing his hands under the figure’s neck.

“Come on.”

Gerry rolls his eyes, but helps, bracing his arm under the statue’s waist and hoisting it back up into a standing position with Jon. When it’s returned to its upright position, there is a moment of stillness, then a single trickle of black water that flows down from the statue’s eye.

“That’s…disconcerting.”

Jon hovers a hand over the trail of black, careful not to touch it as a second stream starts to pour gently out of the right eye.

“Jon…do you feel that?”

When Jon looks up, Gerry’s body is stiff, hands at his sides as he scans the ceiling above them. There is a shift of his pupils, Jon notes, almost feline as he stares, wide-eyed, at the wood paneling above them.

“ _Please_ don’t tell me I’ve unearthed something horrible by turning this upright.” It’s a self- directed grumble despite Gerry’s urgency, and he toys with the idea of pushing the statue back over,

“I’m never coming back to artifact storage if it’s–”

“It’s not the statue. We’re being hunted.”

A sharp pull on his collar, then he’s crouching on the floor next to Gerry.

“What–”

“The dark. You were right.”

Gerry gestures to the floor beneath their feet, to the rising plumes of black smoke curling around their ankles and Gerry’s resting hand.

“Then _why_ –”

Gerry yanks Jon back down as he tries to stand up, forces him to brace his hands on the floor to stop his fall.

“Get down. I _told_ you, we’re being hunted. Beholding’s not the only one blocked by the Dark, you know.”

“I’m not trusting that your haunted corpse pulling me into a puddle of Darkness has my best interests in mind, _Gerry_.”

The hand holding his collar releases.

“Get up, then.”

Jon does not.

“Thought so.” A sliver of a tooth pokes out as amusement escapes his lips, but it’s quickly returned to a frown.

“Before, with that corruption artifact you 'didn’t know’ about…where was that information from?”

“I don’t–”

“Where do you pull that information from?”

Jon sighs, eases himself up until hes balancing properly on the balls of his feet.

“The thing itself. And… _something_ inside of me.”

“Can it find our hunter?”

“Yes, I…I think it can.” Jon points his attention forward, the same rapt attention Gerry had given to the ceiling of the storage.

“The archives…” His voice is breathy, that whisper of fascination buffering the urgency of the news. He clears his throat, steadies his head:

“They’re– it’s in the archives. We have…we have some time.”

“Weapons?”

“What?”

“Not a complicated subject, Jon. Do we. Have. Any. Weapons? I’d prefer not to use the haunted shit down here, if I can help it.”

“Right, I’ve got–”

Jon digs around his pockets, produces a letter opener.

“Christ, that’s _it_? Couldn’t even have a box cutter?”

“We’re not a _packing plant_ , Gerry,”

“Alright, well, give it here.”

Jon hands it over mildy, questioning eye on Gerry’s hand.

“How do you–”

“'Expect me to trust you’?” It’s mocking, slightly spat as he pulls the makeshift weapon from Jon’s palm and starts to sharpen it on the floor.

“Should have thought of that before you handed me a deadly butter knife, I guess.”

Jon frowns, moves his mouth to retort before giving up. The scraping of metal on stone is a steady beat, resonating in disharmonious waves on the different textures that surround them. Gerard looks it over carefully, shoving it into his pocket.

“We’ve got time before they’re down here? Keeping your eye on them?”

“It’s still in the archives. How are you sure it’s not hunting something in _there_?”

“Just am. Come on.”

There is a hand on Jon’s wrist, fingers curled over veins with the requisite force to hold Jon, hoist him up. Gerry moves further into the room, keeping Jon’s pace steady behind him.

“You’re going to _corner_ us in storage. There’s no exit this way.”

“There’s cover. Look at the ground.”

Jon doesn’t need to.

“Artifacts. Can you hold the hunter and look through them at the same time?”

Gerry grants Jon his breadth of silence as he pulls a tendril of focus off the Hunter, pulls it over the items bordering them on all sides.

“It’s…taking some focus, but yes.”

“Good. Find something we can use.”

“Giving up on your _shiv_ so quickly?”

“ _Focus._ ”

Jon’s sight flits over the histories of surrounding objects, their danger and their potential, tracing the dissonant arrangements of potential attack and defense.

“Gerry, there’s– there’s _nothing_ –”

“Looking singularly? Combine them. Don’t get too caught up in one solution.”

“I can’t– _**Get down.**_ ”

Gerry’s descent is smooth as Jon’s arm shoots down with him, leaving both crouching behind a basin of ceramic limbs.

“Jonathan,”

The smell hits Jon’s nose so suddenly he has to throw a hand over his mouth not to gag. Acrid, clinging sour to the back of his tongue, smoke and the sharp taste of burning. The voice that pairs with the smell is deep, rumbling, with an undertone of something Jon is trying not to acknowledge as _arousal_. Terror shoots forward in his veins, the reality of his pursuit now thick in the room, and he pulls his focus off of the hunter, back into himself.

“You know you had one of ours, right, Archivist?” It’s taunting, playful as the unseen entity steps into the room, shifts between the artifacts circling the open door.

“Not smart to cut ties, Jon. Could have been a part of the _family_ , you know? Goes a little way, at least.”

Jon tries to control his breathing as he crouches, then snaps his eyes up to Gerry, sudden burst of insight:

“How fast can you run, Gerry?”

“Pretty fucking fast, last I checked.”

“Then when I tell you to, you’re going to need to. ”

“At them, or away from them?”

“Away. Towards the back of storage.”

“Not a lot of room 'til we hit wall, there.” Gerry appraises the distance, the cluttered path between their current position and the looming back wall. Artifact storage is deep, but far from infinite.

“Trust me."

Gerry nods, returns his eyes to Jon,

“Alright. Give me your sweater.”

“What?”

“It’s hunting you, isn’t it? Not me. Plus I don’t sweat anymore, you do.”

“You– nevermind.” Jon tugs his cardigan off, hands it to Gerry who eases up off the floor enough to pull it over his head. Jon might consider it _comically_ ill-fitting under less dire circumstances.

“Uh, when you see– when you see a woman open a door for you…take it.”

Jon pulls himself up, braces himself against the basin facing the wall.

“Got it.” And Gerry follows suit, keeps his fingertips on the ground as he watches Jon.

He watches the hunter, then, feels their path through the maze of artifacts, the light boiling of fear at the base of his brain that calculates the distance.

“ ** _NOW._** ”

He grips Gerry’s arm as he rockets up, then forward, peeling through the storage with Gerry in his palm. Gerry is faster, as promised, and struggles to keep Jon on his side as they deek around artifacts and over piles of debris. There is a necessary proximity he needs the window of as he watches the wall crawling forward, feels the hot excitement of their pursuer.

“Jon…” Gerry urges, imminence of the wall pressing into him. Jon pants beside him, struggles to keep pace as he replies,

“It needs. To be. The right.

"TIME–

" ** _HELEN!_** ”

It is a booming note in the room, Jon's voice carrying a hint of what Gerry wants to call _distortion_. He doesn't have time to call it anything, though. The promised door opens in front of him, almost too fast to notice as Jon throws himself to one side, drops away from the pursuit. He is panting as Helen closes the door behind them, turns back to face Jon.

“Hello, Jon. Friends of yours?”

“The one– the one being _hunted_ , yes.” He nods, wipes the fear-soaked sweat from his forehead onto the back of his hand.

“I assume you need my help getting him _out_ , as well?”

“ _Obviously_ , christ. You need to – make the walls cave in or something on the one chasing him, catch it off guard or–crush it suddenly–”

“I’m not the _buried_ , Jon. I don’t crush things.”

“Figure something out.”

“Please and thank you.”

“…Please, Helen.”

“…I will try.”

The colours in the hallway are disorienting, a sickening kaleidoscope of sickly greens and deep reds. All Gerard can think of is blood and bile, squirming viscera as his legs throw him forward through the hall. There is a nausea he feels, quickly onset but not in a stomach, rumbling through his torso and over his arms as he runs. He can smell the burnt acidity of his pursuer, stinging his eyes as the ornate tribute to stomach acid spins and hums around him. The Hunter has dropped their voice into a low snarl, a thrashing echo that slaps against the uneven walls as he runs, struggling to make sense of corners only moments before he rounds them on his heel. His surroundings scare him more than his pursuer as he struggles to understand their architecture, forces himself to trust their destination to exist. Tries to trust the Archivist that this is not his new life, resurrected as an offering to unforgiving gods.

It is with a wet crash and a shattering scream that his fears are assuaged. It takes him a moment to slow, to register the silence of the halls around him as he quells his shaking gut. Catching his breath, breathing in through the fabric of his shirt, he turns to look at the predator, the failed assignment. There is a shudder over his spine at the sight: the clawing agony of something still half-human, pinned between the pulsing corners of the hallway, leaking blood and pointing bones from shoulders and legs. Gerard grips the cold metal of the letter opener, damp with sweat as his pants stick to his leg.

“Don’t suppose you wanna hunt your own heart beat to save me from this?” He attempts it as a joke, as if either of them are in a mind to be cheered up. A claw hits his arm, the jagged bone sprouting from a once-human fingertip, and he winces.

“ _Ow_. That’s not nice. Guess it’s what I get, though.”

And he sighs, braces himself before thrusting the sharp end of the letter opener into the Hunter’s chest, sickening _crunch_ ringing out in the haunting zig-zag of their destiny. A mercy still feels like a murder, and Gerry pulls closed the eyes of the eternally slumbering hunter, wipes the bent and bloody weapon on the bottom of Jon’s sweater.

“Your friend’s killed the other one. Shall I let him out?”

“Yes.”

There is no hand on the doorknob, no change in her posture.

“…Yes, _please_ , Helen.”

She nods, closed eyes and tight smile, wrapping a hand that wavers through space over the handle of the door. When it opens beside Gerry he is still stunned in the impact of the kill for a moment, looking at it with the bleary eyes of disbelief. Then he shakes himself off, steps through, and returns.

“…Thank you, Helen.” Jon offers now, hesitant discomfort punctuating every syllable. Another nod in his direction, then she is gone, leaving the two of them alone.

“ I don’t like being forced to kill things, Jon. ”

“It should have– I think she, she _tried_ , at least. There wasn’t any other way, regardless. Not that I could think of.”

Gerry shakes his head, looking past Jon’s shoulder.

“Didn’t say there was. Just that I really, _really_ don’t like it.”

There is a heaviness to his voice, dark and furious, and Jon watches the blood fall from his fingertips as he pushes his body forward out of the artifact storage.

Jon walks behind him on their way back to the archives, silence of the journey punctuated by the occasional creak of rhe floorboards. It takes a while for Jon's eyes to focus, take in the slice on the back of Gerry's arm.

"...You were attacked in there." He reaches out to poke the edge without thinking, watching the flutter of black that falls from the wound.

"I got too close. It happens."

"So then what...are these?"

"Isn't it obvious?"

Gerry turns, leans on the doorframe leading into the archives. He reaches down and grabs one of the fibres from his arm, rubbing it between his fingers and blowing it gently into the air before walking into the archives.

"They're eyelashes."


	3. iii. Ah

When Gerry wakes, once again with one arm leaning on Jon’s desk, the first thing his eyes sweep over is the tension in his posture, the clenched fist on his desk. He’s mid-argument, low, rumbling retorts as a voice pitches over his, lights into him. Gerry re-seals his eyes, maintains the slumbering illusion while they fight.

“He’s _covered_ in blood, Jon! In what world does someone come down and not freak out on seeing that? I’m sorry if I’m supposed to be _used_ to coming down and seeing shit like this instead of frankly tired of it, like a normal goddamn human being.”

“You don’t have to be _comfortable_ with it, Melanie,” Jon grates, “but you don’t need to… _scream_ at me about it. If I could just get a chance to _talk_ ,”

“Then there’d be some perfectly reasonable explanation you’re keeping this down here from everybody like it’s not a massive development. You know I can _see_ what’s coming out of his arm, don’t you? He’s _not_ human.”

“I know–” A switch in tone, folding to hesitation,

“I know he isn’t, Melanie.”

“After _months_ of how you treated me for trusting Helen?”

Quieter still:

“He saved my life, Melanie.”

“So did Michael, didn’t he? So did lots of things that want to kill you.”

“I think we know by now that the spiral is…generally on our side, at least conditionally.”

“But I’m still crazy for trusting it, right? for trusting her? Then you get to pull this and _I’m_ unreasonable. And _he’s_ not the spiral. So what is he?”

“He’s…the Eye. Like us, Melanie.”

“Like you. As far as I’m concerned the Eye’s not any more trustworthy than the rest of them. Just another manifestation here to traumatize me in a new and exciting way, huh?”

“He’s not– he wouldn’t. He’s not here to replace _Elias_ and I– you _know_ I have your best interests in mind, Melanie–”

“Oh, I do, do I? Sure, Jon. Real nice of you to make one positive contribution to my life the entire time I’ve known you and to have it traumatize me. _Real_ thankful for that one.”

“If it’s any consolation,”

Gerry’s voice cuts between them, eliciting small jumps from the pair,

“I’m not necessarily any happier I’m here than you are.”

He pulls his head up from the desk, rolls his shoulders as his body re-adjusts to wakefulness.

“Sorry about the blood. It’s sort-of hard to predict when situations necessitate action in this place.”

Despite the apology, he lacks a clean hand to offer Melanie as he sticks out his arm.

“Gerard, if it helps.”

Melanie stares down at the hand, doesn’t bother hiding her disgust.

“Don’t touch me. You’re Jon’s friend, not mine.”

She turns on her heel, prepares to walk out before hesitating at the door.

“And, Jon? I was yelling. Not screaming.”

The bounce of her pigtails lasts for a moment at the doorway after she walks out, leaving the pair alone once again.

“She seems nice.”

“She’s…been though a lot recently.” Jon sighs, finally relaxes back in his chair.

“Sort of comes with the territory.”

“Yes, you’ve said as much.”

“I’m not saying it to be dismissive. I get it.”

“Oh!– oh. I’m not sure she’d appreciate that, either, frankly.”

Gerry laughs, low and sleep-soaked.

“Yeah, well. Don’t go run and tell her I’m a real sweetheart underneath all the blood, I guess.”

“I’ll make sure to leave it out of the next Archive briefing.”

There’s a sharp smirk Jon pulls at this, an easing of the remaining tension on his body. Gerry slides his hair behind his ear on instinct, pulls his eyes off and slides them onto a bookshelf. Flicks them back to take in the loose energy of Jon’s hand laid out on the desk, the sharp bone of his wrist that peeks out from the cuff of his sleeve. Clears his throat superfluously, pops his arms up to stretch the groggy romanticism off his shoulders.

“You got any cash?”

“Kind of a limp attempt at a mugging, don’t you think?” Jon’s eyes are already back on a scatter of paper on his desk, running over text in line with his hand,

“You couldn’t even be bothered to stand up?”

Soft hint of warmth gliding over Jon’s hand as Gerry laughs onto the desk, eases himself up to stretch,

“You were dying to get rid of me yesterday, should be happy all it’ll take is a little walking around money.”

Gerard stops mid-stretch, evaluates the place where his hand rests on his shoulder,

“God, what muscles am I even trying to stretch here? -- Anyway, I need a phone. And to not have to sit here and bum all my cigarettes like I’m fourteen.

"Aren’t you _bound_ to the institute like the rest of us? What could you _possibly_ need a phone for?”

“I’ve got to call home when I’m late for dinner, don’t I? Anyway, forgive me for wanting a little independence. They really don’t give the Archivist a company card for his undead minion needs, huh?”

“They…do _not_.” Jon sighs, reluctantly pulling the wallet from his front pocket.

“Here, I’ve got…fifty pounds. Will that be _sufficient_?” He hands the note over between two fingers, folded neatly down the middle. Gerry wastes no time shoving it into his back pocket.

“God, really feels like getting an allowance, huh?”

“Yes, well. Don’t spend it all in one place.”

Jon does not look up with this delivery, focused eyes still studying the text on the pages in front of him. There is a moment of silence decorated by the scratching of Jon’s pen before Gerry ventures,

“Hey, Archivist.”

This snaps Jon up out of his focus, back to Gerry’s bloodied hand being presented to him for evaluation.

“Got a bathroom in this place?”

* * *

Gerry sits, new phone in hand, cigarettes in pocket, stoned out of his mind on an unmanned park bench. He is leaning back, arms laid out to either side of him as he takes in the feeling of sun on his face, the crawling speed of the clouds overhead. The wind that greeted him when he left the institute hadn’t persisted, and he now had the pleasure of a park filled with eyes to skirt over him, make sure he felt _observed_ both inside the institute and out.

He was pleasantly surprised to find the geeky middle-aged man he'd been buying weed from for a decade in the same flat when he took the gamble on knocking. When the door swung open to the living room littered with monster manuals and half-painted warhammer figures, Gerard was equally delighted to not have to explain why he was still alive. Gertrude apparently hadn’t felt the need to let Gerry’s short list of social contacts know about his untimely Destination Funeral. He had to sit through a lengthy presentation on a replica battle axe from some apparently significant film series in exchange for his three year hiatus, but he faked his way through it with relative social ease.

He lets his eyes fall closed as he sits in the feeling, the attempting relaxation of muscles that barely exist, the plush feel of his fingers on wood. Apparently a body made mostly of hair is easily wrecked, something he hadn’t necessarily accounted for, and he floats in and out of focus for far longer than socially acceptable until a pushy cop is standing in front of him, asking prying questions of pseudo-concern, hoping for a slip. Gerard pulls a rehearsed spiel about a locked apartment and an absent roommate, pushing himself to his feet and brushing past with a limp apology about taking up a public bench before making himself scarce. Pulls his hair over both ears as he walks, reveling in the soft feeling of skin and hair around his altered brain. He’s running out of time to be away from the institute, he thinks, and dreading the uncoordinated navigation of an interior space and a neurotic Archivist before his system purges the concept of forced relaxation. Maybe having no bloodstream means he’ll just be stoned forever, he muses. Cheap date.

Gerard takes the longest possible road back to the institute: steadfast dedication to the scenic route.

* * *

He tries to slip back into the archives as casually as possible despite his fuzzy perception of space, the unnecessary introduction of his entrance by the institute secretary. Sits down across the still-recording Archivist with only a small pricking of confusion disrupting his muscle memory dedicated to pulling out a chair and lowering himself into it.

There is some time elapsed watching the rhythmic movements of the Archivist’s mouth as he speaks, soaks in the soft lilting notes of his voice before Gerard gives up on focus and just stares idly at his own hands, studying the flex of immaterial tendons under his lines of tattoos.

“Sorry about that,” Jon slices through the mental hum, voice sharp with the focus of a freshly completed statement. Gerry hadn’t noticed him finish, lazily pulling his hand along the pattern of wood grain on Jon’s desk.

“…And you’ve come back profoundly stoned. What an incredibly productive use of time and money.”

There is an itch of anger at the back of Gerard’s mind, the broil of shame that flares when one’s attempts to survive are studied and mocked with familiar disdain. Jon is re-organizing papers into folders, posture taut when Gerard replies,

“Do I need to be productive every moment I’m here? The last time I checked, we were still stuck on ‘Gerry’s scary’.”

“Get sent a demonic secretary who doesn’t know why he’s here and he spends half the time sleeping and getting stoned, walks around covered in blood for an entire day and wonders why I don’t trust him.” The fiddling of papers is still running Jon’s hands, criticisms off the cuff as he glares at the unhelpful pile of information before him. Then a hand pulls the folder from his own, whips it against the bookshelf to his left as his mind registers the shift of Gerry’s shadow, the blocking out of light above his head. When he looks up, neither the worry on his face nor the anger on Gerry’s is concealed.

“What is 'productive’, then, rookie Archivist? The kind of paranoia that keeps me here but resents me for it? Running an archive full of people that hate you? Poking around old dusty tombs without having the insight to understand when your headquarters are being invaded?”

There is a hand on Jon’s head, then, a gentle rest of fingers on temple that sends an unexpected shiver down Jon’s spine.

“Is violence productive, if I’m not allowed to access information, then? If I’m not allowed to relax enough to stop clinging to some of it? Don’t need a weapon to kill somebody, you know. Not if they don’t know how to defend themselves.”

There is a startled step back from Jon, catching himself on the back of his chair as he stumbles.

“Do you think I like being here, Jon?”

There’s a dry swallow from him, still braced on the spine of his chair.

“I…I don’t know? I hadn’t really–”

“Hadn’t. Really. Considered it. Of course not. Why would you?”

Gerry’s hand lowers, rests in a fist on the desk as he leans his weight down onto it,

“I don't actually like this arrangement either, Archivist. I didn’t exactly want to come back as an indentured servant, no given purpose, without the ability to leave these archives for more than a few hours now that I’m here. Hell, I don’t know if I wanted to come back at _all_. And god, you know, even my _mother_ didn’t give me grief for coming home miserable and stoned as a kid as long as I was still useful to her. You can’t even manage that much, huh?”

Jon is quiet for a while, pulling himself back up from his chair-clutching lean to something more composed, upright. He runs a finger absentmindedly over his lip, takes in Gerry’s ire before softly pitching back,

“You didn’t want to come back as a monster, either, did you?”

“ _Don’t_ call me that. I don’t know if I want to be back in a form where other people think I’m a _thing_ , treat me like one under the paltry guise of unsteady friendship. Death was never something I asked to come back from, not from Gertrude and _not_ from this fucking institute.”

Jon’s eyes meet his, then, wide and – Gerry thinks, anyway – almost tearful.

“Did you…want me to do something about that?

"Are you offering to _kill me_?”

“I feel…responsible. I must be the reason you were brought back, aren’t I? An error burning the page– and I _did_ burn the page before so– so if you need me to help…I can.”

A steeling of nerves, a fixing of his posture into something upright, resolute.

“I _will_.”

Gerard just sighs, shakes his head before running a hand over it.

“I don’t need you to _kill_ me, Jon. Just…let me know where you sleep in this place.”

“So…you can kill _me_?” Jon asks, comically meek. The eyes that return to meet him are heavy, wet as Gerry lets them relax.

“I’m _tired_. Whatever this body is, I’m not _used_ to it yet. I’m not trying to fish a knife out or plot your demise or piss all over your statements or whatever, I’m just _exhausted_. And should I remind you? I don’t have a _home_ to go to because the eye wasn’t exactly paying my rent when I was dead, and I got a little tired of trying to conspicuously nap in public the four days I had to wander around and make up a reason to exist that wasn’t inevitably coming back here. You can even _watch_ me if you want. I just. Need. To _sleep_.”

Gerry breaks eyes, sharp profile betraying his fatigue as he stares without focus at an archive bookshelf.

“R-right. Right. Well. There’s a–a cot, in the back if you’d like, um. Please…be my guest. ”

Gerry doesn’t say a word on his way back, half-stumbling with exhaustion before he closes the door behind him.

* * *

He wakes up to a hot cup of tea and the Archivist cross-legged on the floor, flipping through files with a pen between his teeth.

“Really? You actually _did_ watch me?”

Jon looks up, surprised, pen dropping to the floor as he opens his mouth without thinking.

“No, I–just wasn’t sure when you’d be awake. To ah, to apologize. And also–in case you wanted some tea. Wasn’t sure how you took it.”

“Same as coffee.”

“Wh– _cream_?”

“Come to apologize or make fun of how I take my tea?”

“Oh, r–right, sorry.”

To Jon’s credit, he scoops up the cup of tea, disappearing out the door before Gerry’s sleep-soaked brain can process what he’s doing. When Jon returns to an upright Gerry, the tea is highlighted with the pale white of dairy fat, residual gains of sugar still spinning gently at the bottom.

“Thanks.” Gerry intones, taking the cup and sucking back a mouthful onto the dry morning of his tongue. Jon watches quietly, shifting onto the couch across from him. After a few deep swallows, the cup is placed neatly onto the closest match for a table in the cramped clutter of the room, leaving Gerry to face Jon unoccupied. He leans back against the wall, cot sagging with his redistributed weight as he lifts an arm out towards the Archivist.

“Go on.”

It takes Jon a second, slow tracking of the return to subject, and he rolls his hands one over the other in his lap, forcing his eyes onto Gerry after a moment of hesitation.

“I’m– sorry. For making this so much more difficult than it needs to be. Although I suppose the nature of 'it’ is still somewhat ambiguous, that doesn’t…”

Jon rubs the back of his neck, break of eye contact as his nerves get the better of him,

“It doesn’t justify making you miserable just because I’m a little overwhelmed. It’s just…confusing. And _hard_. It’s hard because I– from what I can tell, I _like_ you, Gerry. You’re– fun to be around, and you’re engaging. I was not _particularly_ attached to myself before I became the Archivist and now I’m…'The Archivist'. So I’m someone I wasn’t particularly invested in, who’s now a monster, as well. And with Helen, you know– she came to me because she was so afraid of the spiral, from how it had felt to be in there, it pored over every inch of her when she came here so-- so _desperate_ to escape, and now...now she _is_ it. So it’s not her anymore, because that’s– that’s antithetical to everything about her, everything that _defined_ her when I met her and– and she felt it very powerfully, the need to get out. And now that thing has _consumed_ her, so what is left but something to hate? And with me, I– I _took_ this job, Gerry. I _wanted_ it. So the parts of me that yearn for this information, that benefit from other people’s suffering…they were already a part of me, right? That’s why…that’s why I don’t _feel_ different. You don’t have to be inhuman to become a monster, right? So I figure that’s me, that’s why I fill the role of Archivist so well, I– suit it, I _chose_ it, I already fit into it in some way. And then…and then there’s you, all of a sudden, and– and you didn’t _ask_ for this, you didn’t seek it out, by all accounts you’ve been– you’ve been _taken over_ or– or hollowed out and filled with something else and you just _look_ like Gerry but then, then you talk to me and it’s just like I’m hovering over that book in America, and I’m getting distracted listening to all this– not just what you have to say but, how it feels to hear you say it and have the first pleasant conversation with something that wasn’t trying to kill me or kidnap me, even if he’s dead and trapped inside a book. It _feels_ the same, it feels– normal, like meeting another _person_ and I don’t understand what it means.”

When Jon looks up from his discordant rambling, up from the sight of his own shaking hands and bouncing knee, his eyes are wide, fearful as he looks at Gerry.

“Because you’re an avatar, aren’t you? And if I’m– if I’m not scared around you, if I’m if I’m having _fun_ talking to you and I’m not concerned for a moment, what does that _mean_? What is– what is _happening_ to me that makes that possible? What am I being _distracted_ from? And you– I always felt you had such strong _morals_ when I read about you, when you would pop up in statements and– halfway across the continent, telling some girl you didn’t know how to keep her grip on reality and, and here, saving my life and then just– having a nap and trying to connect with archival staff that clearly resents you being here and I think– how is that _possible_? That fear can build you back from the ground up and you’re so– _good_? Do I have some fundamental misunderstanding of what the Beholding even is, or– or has my moral compass been so fundamentally skewed this whole time I haven’t even been living in reality? And if I’m not living in reality, when did I stop? When did I become unable to notice that I was losing my grip?”

There is desperation clawing at the Archivist’s voice as he finishes, closing his mouth with a soft brush of shame. Gerry just stares at his hands, running one over his arm as he processes, feels. Then pitches:

“Maybe I’m just another spatula with a bit of free will, Jon.”

“Christ.” There is a small untangling of nerves, a shift in Jon’s posture as the faintest wisp of amusement threatens the edge of his lips,

“Well…I suppose it gets a bit absurd for the ladle to keep distrusting the spatula, doesn’t it?”

Then a return to neurosis, twitch of arm and skittering of eyes,

“That’s– that’s me, by the way. I’m the ladle.”

“Yes, Jon. I picked that up. You followed format just fine.”

Gerry lets some small amusement spill over the density of the subject that sits between them, laugh threatening the back of his throat despite the disorienting myriad of information delivered by Jon. He rolls his eyes over the Archivist, lithe form curled inward, emptied out of his swirling torrent of ideas and left empty, compromised structure of mental unrest.

“Jon could I…could I talk to her?”

“...Who?”

“Helen.”

* * *

 “This…should be her.” Jon gestures to the door, hideous, sickly yellow with a dizzying swirl of wood grain.

“I suppose you could…knock?”

Gerry laughs, nerve-tinged, knocks a disorienting rhythm onto the wood, not in line with the pace at which his hand actually moves. There is a flutter of fingertips along the seam of the door, impossible to track, then a swinging open as Helen steps out.

“Hello, Jon. Friend of Jon.”

“Gerard. Gerard Keay.” He reflexively offers his hand, elicits a stare from Helen before she gingerly takes it, moves it in directions that Gerry cannot parse.

“It’s been a while since I’ve tried that,” Helen muses, “sort of odd now.”

“Points for trying, at least. Folks around here have been a bit rude about it, frankly.” He pulls a grin, sliding his hand back into his pocket.

“Should I…leave you two alone, then?” Jon asks, hovering at an awkward equidistance between the hallway’s door and Helen’s.

Gerard looks over his shoulder, raises an eyebrow,

“Trust me?”

“If not in spirit quite yet, than at least in action.”

Gerard gives a nod to this, signaling the Archivist to follow his instincts back out of the hallway. Once he leaves, Gerard returns his sight to Helen, drifting onto the hypnotic undulating of her yellow door. She follows his eyes, sits in the comfortable unrest of her nonconsensual home before turning back.

“Do you want to go in?”

Quietly, then, as his eyes drag along the surface, struggle against disorientation,

“You know? I actually do, a little.”

It’s a small laugh, uncertain, as Gerry feels the way his mind tracks the constant shifting of image before him, the pattern of disorientation. He remembers the sickly hum of the inside of the halls, same nausea peeking into his body, but there is a thrill that bubbles underneath: the challenge of navigating a kaleidoscope of terror.

“I’m not trying to be presumptuous. Just sort-of the way you looked at it.

Gerry nods, pulls his eyes away to stare at the stillness of the walls around him,

“Yeah. Sort of hard not to be imbued with all this Beholding energy and not want to challenge the Spiral, I guess. Can’t imagine it would make my goal of getting Jon to trust me go all that smoothly if that’s what happened the first time he let me wander around on my own.”

Helen moves her head at this, a cock sideways that runs like a shaking tumble down a cliff, waves of colour stuttering behind her as she moves.

“I assumed you were friends. He seemed fond of you.”

“From what I've seen, I'm inclined to believe you. Doesn't make him any less paranoid about me, though. Archivist's got a few trust issues, I think."

“Yes. I noticed that when he would yell at me every time I tried to talk to him.”

Gerry snorts.

“And here I thought he was just yelling for you 'cause we were about to get eviscerated. Didn’t know that was just his standard social decorum.”

“Yes. He’s unpleasant to me.”

There is a soft sadness on her when Gerry looks back at her, leaning on the frame of her door as the upwards pitch of her eyebrows swirls and boils.

“Yeah. He doesn’t seem to be taking to his role as the Archivist with much…critical analysis into inhumanity, I’ll say. Or at least not any that’s particularly successful. Are you trapped here, then?”

“No,” she shakes her head, “I’m free to go where I like. But this place is– I _do_ have some connection to it, and to him, whether he likes it or not. And I support what he’s doing– I’m not keen on rituals from other entities taking place and uprooting my reality just yet. Frankly, I’m still getting used to existing.”

“Yeah, I feel you, there. Existence as a _thing_ is a little disorienting to experience anew. Don’t tell Jon I called myself that, though. He’d have a field day.”

“If I could convince him to speak to me, I can promise you my lips would be sealed.”

She mimes the pull of a zipper across her mouth, successfully disrupting the skin into an unsettling interlocking pattern before it hums back into some semblance of normalcy.

“I could try, if you like.”

Helen piques her head up, still leaning on the sickly yellow doorway.

“Convince him to speak to you with _some_  attempt at human decency. I think despite himself he’s slightly more fond of me than he is of you.”

Soft pull of smile across her scattering face,

“Yes. I got that impression, as well. I won’t stop you, but don’t feel obligated. I do have friends at the institute besides Jon, now, I'm not quite as desperate as I waas when I was still new.”

“I think you’re doing better than he is here, then,” Gerry laughs,

“There a friendly bunch of employees here I haven’t met yet?”

“I talk to Melanie. She’s nice.”

“She’s _nice_?” His own laugh catches him off guard as it sweeps into something loud, booming,

“I met her! That chick is _scary,_ Helen. I guess maybe she’s _trying_ to be nice, when she’s not reaming Jon out, at least. Pretty sure she mentioned you, actually.”

Another smile, spark of amusement rumbling from one side of her face to another,

“Something scary trying to be nice. That’s what I am. Isn’t it you, too?”

“I…guess you're right.” He sighs, resigned, “Doesn’t take as much effort as I’d have thought. That worries me.”

“I know what you mean.”

Silence descends, finally, hangs between them as Gerry leans on a wall, studies his inhuman hands again out of the watchful eye of Jon. Helen takes note of the nature of his study, looks down at her own swirling terror of palm with the same disconnected uneasiness. Studies the bones that meet at too many places and too few, the bridges of skin and space that hum across her eyes, refusing rest. She finds that there is a terrifying vulnerability in allowing herself to study her inhumanity with another, equally lost.

“Are you much of a hugger?” Gerry’s voice pulls into her mind, lifts her from the disquieting confrontation of her nature,

“I’m kind of afraid to ask Jon, honestly.”

“I’m not sure if I am anymore…” Is her confession, eyes light when they pull from her hands to Gerry,

“I haven’t tried like this yet.”

She looks back at the way her hands morph gently under her skin, at the way her freckles shift and spin into complex patterns across her knuckles, still considering them for what feels like the first time.

“I guess it really couldn’t hurt to find out.”

And she stutters a bit when she steps forward, places one ugly blue pump between Gerard’s legs as she moves her arms around him: trying to push them forward, then together, but her arms don’t move _exactly_ the way they’re ever supposed to, and her other foot is locked behind her, heel lifted slightly in an awkward half-step as she tries to fit together with something that is not chaos. And it _does_ hurt a little, but she doesn’t say so and Gerry doesn’t either as she feels the slight compression of her dimensions and as the constant spinning of her being disorients Gerry into a small psychic headache, because to be unified in pain is so often what it means to cling to humanity. And they pull apart when they get a little too uncomfortable, Helen popping both feet together as she gives Gerard a small, impossible wave.

“Goodbye, Gerard. Thank you for wanting to see me.”

“Gerry. For the love of god, Gerry,” and he pulls a small laugh at this, but it is sad, and she gives him a smile equal parts _pitying_ and _sharing_ as he does so. And he feels the need to avert his eyes when she opens her door, so he does, and he doesn’t look back until he hears the final _click_ of it closing.

* * *

 Gerry resists the urge to head straight back to the main room of the archives, opting instead to explore the rest of the institute basement. It's cramped, dusty in a way that feels pleasantly uncared for, the inviting energy of obscured history. He finds himself squeezing between bookshelves to chase the feeling of isolation, his first moments truly alone as he braces himself in the shadow of stranger's trauma. It's a familiar feeling to him, anyway: to be in pain and alone with it so long. He wonders if the kinship he feels with scraps paper is his own mind or the thirst of an unsatiated deity coursing through his veins.

When Jon happens on him an hour later, he is cross-legged on the floor, nose buried in a statement with a box of them sitting open by his leg. Jon isn't expecting the smallness of him in this moment, the tight worry on his face as his eyes scan the page, pull in the mild bewitching of a written statement inside the mind. He loses himself in it for a moment, traces the loop of his hair that's been pulled in a knot over itself, resting on his shoulder.

"Helen wasn't a, ah- rewarding conversationalist?" He ventures, watches the pop of surprise that lights up Gerard's eyes.

"Hm. Thought that feeling of being watched was just a symptom of reading this. Got worried letting me off leash for so long?"

"You're not-- No, no. I just came down here for some follow-up. Didn't realize you'd be in this part of the archives. Not trying to make you feel like you're being watched."

"You're good at it, though. Like when were spying on me in that coffee shop on Tuesday." His eyes are still scanning the page in his lap, but he grins to himself as he says this, private amusement at Jon's expense.

"I didn't-- I wasn't _spying_ on you. I just...you saw me?"

"Didn't have to. You're an avatar of the entity that controls when people feel like they're being _observed_. That's my point: you don't think I might catch on if I get a real strong feeling I'm being watched all of a sudden?"

"Oh! I--no, I didn't think, I uh...that was something that happened."

"No, I suppose not. I've noticed you're taking the rookie part of your title pretty seriously."

Jon's posture tightens, finger extending before he catches himself, pulls the hand it's attached to back down to his side,

"There's a bit of a steep learning curve, unfortunately. I suppose if it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly, though."

"That's the spirit. Couldn't get the old bird to take a joke, at least your Archival personality development is still in its infancy."

"Frankly, a personality overhaul might have been a nice touch. Slogging along with a backlog of human neuroses isn't actually the ideal state for an entity of malevolent observation, I'd imagine."

"Entities take what they need, discard what they don't. Don't think you need any _particular_ characteristics to observe the way you might with another. You can be as uptight as you like."

"Lucky me." Jon deadpans, and he's tempted to classify Gerry's resulting laugh as a _giggle_.

"I found your predecessor down here, by the way. Though I suppose the archives would be full of her, wouldn't they?"

"What, like...a statement?"

"Not quite. Notes to herself on other people's. It's more that she gets sort of... _rambly_ , getting possessed by the spirit of the great eyeball in the sky, I figure. Eighties for this one. Just weird to read her sounding so... _young_."

A small clear of his throat, finally looking up at the current Archival iteration,

"Relatively speaking, that is."

Jon watches the movement of Gerry's eyes from the page, reluctant, traces his eye along the taut energy with which Gerry grips the page.

"Would you...like some privacy?" Jon realizes, connection popping from his mouth the moment it's made. Gerry's face drops back into seriousness, back into the spiralling words of a younger, softer Gertrude as he sheds his strained sociability.

"...I would appreciate it, yeah." And he means it, because he would. But he still watches the back of the Archivist as he finds his way to his supplementary information, watches the jumpy pop of his hips as he walks, the way his rolled-up sleeves hug the skin on his gently twitching arms.

* * *

Gerry is not surprised to see Jon once again at his desk when he returns, statement flowing from his lips into a familiar tape recorder. He lets him finish before walking over, leaning his arm on the desk as Jon tidies the relevant debris before him.

"Slow day in the archives?"

Jon looks up, small jolt of surprise, before drawing his eyes back down to his desk,

"It's simultaneously relief and highly unnerving to spend time like this, frankly. Not being attacked, but not having any sort of forward momentum, it's-- unsettling, honestly."

He works at packing up the statement and its associated material, arranging them into a messy pile that betrays his exhaustion.

Gerry's not sure he's seen this Archivist exhausted yet.

"Do you have...fun?" Jon ventures, eyes pulling up with that familiar edge of unearned panic,

"Ah, exploring the archives?"

"Fun's an alright word for it, sure." Gerry cuts a laugh into Jon's worry, watching the weariness on the Archivist as he stands.

"I appreciate the _attempts_ to trust me. Can tell it's not exactly your strong suit."

"I _am_ trying, if you can believe it. Frankly, it could be a lot worse."

"No need to be frank. I have no trouble believing that _whatsoever_."

It is then that Jon feels the shock through his system at the unfamiliar pressure around his shoulders, slowly registering the arm that Gerry has slung around him in a hug.

"I mean it, really. Thank you."

There are hands on Gerry's hips, an odd sort of pat being delivered on both his sides.

"I...appreciate the sentiment, Gerry, I really do, I just sort of-- can't handle hugs."

"Oh! Sorry,"

Gerard is off of him quickly, distance shot between them at Gerry's understanding. Jon just gives a weary smile, rubs his hand over the fabric of his sweater.

"Don't be. I know it's odd."

"Not the weirdest by a long shot," Gerry pitches back,

"Just hard not to miss some fundamental things about being human when you haven't been one in a while."

"Yes," Jon nods, eyes to the floor, sadness pulled out from behind the weariness of his smile,

"It is."

He opens the door to the back room, then, leaving it cracked as he walks in. When he doesn't reappear, Gerry pushes his way in after him, surprised to find that he's fallen asleep in the few seconds of consideration Gerry had paused to take. What he finds less surprising is how thoroughly uncomfortable Jon looks while doing so. It also does not escape his notice that the Archivist has opted for the couch rather than the more spacious cot as he drops himself down onto the latter, feels the weight of exhaustion from a new body navigating a lightly occupied day.

 👁

You are Gerard Keay, and you are not. But mostly, you are. You need to be, to be as close to humanity as possible.

You are in the artifact storage. You do not remember how you got to the artifact storage, but you are not using the Gerard Keay part of your body to make these decisions. It is not the part of you given by Gerard Keay that moves your legs forward.

In a past life, you are familiar with the bowl of water and its effect.

So is It.

What It is not familiar with, however, is how it feels to be taken. It only knows the effects on a human brain, on the grey mass of flesh that makes a person.

You put your hand in the bowl.

You are not sure if you scream.

How is it possible, you wonder? For their to be nerve endings in a bed of hair? How is it possible to feel the tearing of muscle that does not exist, the severing of arteries that do not pulse?

This is Its gift to you.

You push your arm in farther.

The teeth you have are real. The head is a difficult piece to fake, so it is almost always real. You press your real teeth together inside your fake body. You do not know if one of them cracks as you feel your elbow start to dissolve.

How is it possible, to experience the pain of a body without its limits?

Your arm is submerged up to the shoulder. Your mind screams. You are still not sure if your mouth does the same. Your face hovers above the water, your hair touches its surface and pools around your reflection. In your eyes you see the terror of humanity, and the resolve of a god.

This is Its gift to you.

You take a deep breath when you understand it's time to submerge your head.

👁

" ** _Gerard!_** "

👁

The Archivist and the Study sit on the floor of the artifact storage, soaked in pale water and wracked by shaking breaths. The hand that grips the Archivist's pant leg is desperate, tense as Gerard heaves beside him, eyes wide through black hair. The archivist's arms are pallid, corroded where the water has touched them. He feels the pulse of skin as they struggle to reconnect, tether themselves back together. Gerard's skin is untouched, save for the thick coating of lashes spreading up and down his arm.

"...Thank you." Is what Gerry manages to choke out, eyes glued to the floor as he struggles to centre his mind. Jon twitches occasionally beneath him, arms adjusting to the pain of accelerated healing.

"No, ah...no problem." Gerry manages a laugh through the pain at the forcibly casual tone from Jon.

"Anything you'd like to...discuss?" Jon ventures, still through gasping inhalations of air.

"I'm in, uh, no real mood to make a _statement_ , Jon."

"No! Sorry, I'm not trying to--just, just normal. If you need to talk about it."

"I'm sure I'll have to eventually. But not...not now."

"Yes that's...that's understandable."

Breath regaining its usual tempo and the pain beginning to wane, Gerry pulls himself to a crouch, pushes himself back down against the wall beside Jon.

"Hell, I'd talk about it now if it meant I could be anywhere but here. But I think my body has other ideas besides walking."

"I could--I could help, if you like? Just give me, ah...a few seconds."

"No hurry."

A few more wordless, wet breaths from both of them, then Jon eases himself up, crouching low enough for Gerry to throw an arm over his shoulders. Gerry braces his still-compromised arm against the wall, pushes himself into a relatively functional position beside the Archivist. The hand that braces his waist is firm, but there is the faint residual of Jon's nervous shaking brushing the core of Gerry's spine as they walk.

* * *

 

Catching the totality of their breaths takes some time as they sink into the back room's couch, leaning back into the cushions with the dense weight of receding terror. Jon is the first to pull words from the silence, spinning simple words out of feelings from which Gerard has not yet recovered.

"Sorry to, ah, call you Gerard back there. Got used to that one reading so many statements-- didn't, um. Didn't think it was still in there quite so stubbornly, honestly."

"Sort of a misnomer, isn't it?" Gerry sits up, feels the painful creak of his skin as it shifts.

"What?"

"Apologizing for using my proper name when you're pulling me out of a tub of demonic water. Just seems like kind of missing the point of it all."

"Oh! Actually-- that in itself is a misnomer! It only applies to terms that are misapplied, not misplaced concern or other concepts--"

"Sorry, are you getting _excited_ about my linguistic clumsiness over there?"

"Sorry! It's just-- an interesting coincidence, is all." 

Gerard laughs at this, elicits a small jump from Jon as he drops a hand onto his head, musses the top of his hair.

"Told you not to deflate. It's cute, I promise. Lightens the mood."

There is a pull of red over Jon's face as he re-arranges himself, charming inability to be caught off guard that Gerry revels in silently. It's a delight short lived, however, as Gerry's mind pulls him back, swims through the trajectory of agony.

"I don't actually think you saved my life, you know." He tells the wall, profile stiff when Jon looks back up.

"I-I'm sorry? If it was--if that was too _late_ I'm still not sure what else I could have done to stop it."

Gerry rolls his head on his shoulder, meets the Archivist's eye with a shake of his head.

"That's not what I mean, Jon. Just because the statement involves you doesn't make it a criticism."

Gerard tries to ignore to soft hint of confusion when the word 'statement' hits Jon's ears, the endearing re-adjustment of meaning.

"I just mean...I don't think I was supposed to die. I was just supposed to... _feel_ it. I think I need to be inhuman enough not to die, but still...human enough to feel."

Jon's hand moves up, stops mid-air and returns, resigned to the consistent confusion of comfort.

"I'm sorry, Gerry."

"You seem to be that way a lot." There's a hollow chuckle after this, quick breath of humour over the metal on his lips,

"But you don't need to be. You know you don't need to carry the burden of _every_ beholding related incident on your back, right?"

"I don't see how I shouldn't."

"Yeah, well..." Gerard shrugs, leans onto the wall as he stares at the sliver of light falling from the back room's window,

"You'll figure it out."

He laughs, then, hung somewhere between the trip from pain to acceptance, and closes his eyes to the feeling of cold concrete against his skull. He drops out of consciousness almost immediately, the exhaustion of psychic exertion dragging his mind down in one swift motion.

When his eyes respond to the first spark of sunlight through the window and flutter open, there is a soft weight circling his shoulders against the wall. When he pulls the blanket off, smooths the fabric over his lap, he looks up to see Jon across from him in an awkward, angular slumber: uncovered.


	4. iv. Fe

It is the screaming pulse of his own pain that wakes Jon from sleep, electric splinter in his mind that almost sends him tumbling out of bed as he clutches at his head. The piercing wrongness is sharp as his body finds his shoes, slips them over his heels without the influence of higher cognitive functions. It is in this state that he stumbles out into the archives, target on the back of the source of his pain.

* * *

  
Gerry’s thumb is embedded in the paper of a photograph, digging into it with a shaking intensity that rattles his core. It is the eyes of the subject he scrapes away at with the tip of his nail, arm rumbling furiously as he starts to lose a grip on himself, lose control of the concise circle of his motions.  
  
There is a crash underneath his elbow, then, a suddenly overturned mug on a pile of statements, littered with the resulting shards. The tepid water soaks into the paper, swirls the ink deep into the core of the page: far away from coherence. Gerry feels a joyless delight at the destruction, plunging his hands into the wet paper stack and tearing, pulp and eyelashes flying outward as his hands reach the scattered ceramic.  
  
“If you want information so bad, maybe you should manifest someone with a little less resentment under his belt next time.” He growls, sends a fresh pile of statements cascading to the floor and tears into it with vigor he didn’t know his artificial body was capable of.

  
“Gerry, _stop_ ,” Comes the admonishment from behind him, an unwelcome betrayal from his last earthly connection.  
  
“You know big, bad Elias can’t get you here, right? Or are you really so caught up in it that Beholding is all you care about now?”  
  
A fresh rip through the air: the enthused desecration of coerced history. The next pile he picks up is thick in his hands, big enough to blind a big, malevolent eye.  
  
“Gerry, it _hurts_.” It is gritted now, squeezed out with an angry force from behind the Archivist’s teeth. This stops Gerry, spins him until he’s looking at the hobbled frame of his Archivist, hand clutching head as the other maintains his grip on the table: the only thing holding him upright. His legs try to buckle under him despite the grip on the table, and Gerard holds the statements still in his hands, watches through the thick fog of anger coating his brain. His hands do not move to tear them, lowering slowly as he exhales.  
  
“…Thank you.” Is the sigh that comes from Jon, easing himself back up until he’s more or less upright. Walking shakily over, he takes the pile of statements from Gerard’s hands, placing them lightly in the overturned box on the floor. Gerard does not resist, bending down to grab a single statement, place it in the box, and repeat. He works methodically while Jon scrambles, desperate not to feel, desperate to stop feeling. When they are done Jon is breathing shakily, propped up by his hands on the wood of the floor.  
  
“Sorry.” Gerry musters, though there is nothing in his voice but anger.  
  
“D-don’t be, Gerry, it’s fine. I’m sure I would have done…more or less the same thing, in your position.”  
  
“Yeah. Sure.” He does not meet Jon’s eyes, stares and angry mile into the distant wall.  
  
“I’m tired of existing so other people can toy with me. I don’t need to keep being brought back so things can reach into me and play around. I don’t deserve that. I _never_ have.”  
  
“No, you– you don’t. You didn’t.”  
  
It’s with some hesitation that he lifts his arm, places it lightly on Gerard’s shoulder.  
  
“Sorry I trashed your archives. Probably should have figured they were wired straight to your brain.”  
  
“Yes, well…I’m sorry the demonic entity that keeps bringing you back from the dead is my employer.”  
  
Gerard flashes a smile, drops it fast. His breaths in and out are heavy, steady, focused as he lets his eyes fall closed.  
  
“I’d love to just burn myself out, become something they couldn’t use for _anything_ but – but they would see that, too, wouldn’t they? Soak up every agonizing moment until there was nothing left to feel their pain for them. Wish I could do it without them ever even _knowing_.”  
  
“Well, does–does alcohol…still work on you? Or–or drugs?”  
  
“Jon, you’re not supposed to give people advice on how to kill themselves easier, you know.”  
  
“Oh! Sorry, I’m…I’m sorry. I just thought, well–not _enough_ , I suppose…”

  
Gerry lets out a small huff of a laugh, a reluctant exhalation of bitter energy.  
  
“I’m sure no matter what I did they would drag me back anyway,” he sighs, feeling the unconscious squeeze on his arm as the Archivist flexes in response.  
  
Gerry pulls his hand away from angrily gripping his knee, grabs the extremity holding onto his arm and returns the squeeze in kind. Then, faster than the Archivist can track, he is encircled in arms and pressed to Gerry’s chest, glasses pressing in an awkward diagonal against the logo on Gerry’s shirt.  
  
Jon tries to settle into the feeling, snake his still-shaking hands around Gerry’s back, resting them in the mess of his hair. He lets his glasses press unevenly into his face, tries to even out his breathing as he lets his head weigh onto Gerry.  
  
“Sorry, you need to come up for air?”  
  
“You… _really_ don’t need to worry about me when you’re feeling like this, Gerry.”  
  
“Jon, I don’t think I can express how much easier it is to worry about shit like that than it is to sit in this feeling.”  
  
“…We’ve got a few minutes until I really start to get uncomfortable. I promise I’ll let you know.”  
  
“...Alright.”  
  
And Jon feels Gerard relax, let the weight of his head fall on top of the Archivist's for as long as Jon will allow. And Jon monitors his allowance carefully, silently tracking the overwhelming seconds in the soft crook of Gerry's neck.  
  


* * *

  
Jon is already gone when Gerard wakes up the second time, dull sounds of life filtering in beneath the door. He eases himself up, finds himself needlessly trying to crack his back again, if only to engage in some manner of morning routine. He stares down at the same shirt he’s been wearing for over a week, monotony starting to itch at the back of his mind as he does so. It seems vaguely amusing to steal a stuffy Archivist shirt when he toys with the idea, but altogether useless if he’s trying to feel more comfortable in his– he _guesses_ it’s skin? More comfortable in his new form, anyway.  
  
When Gerard runs out of midmorning ruminations, he pushes his way through the door and out into the archives. Jon attends quickly for once, head popping up the moment Gerry pokes a foot out onto the threshold, tape recorder clicking itself on before Jon can hover his thumb over the requisite red button.  
  
"That's a neat little trick." Gerry quips, pulls an uneven smile at the furious whir of the tape recorder. "Very spooky. Don't think Gertrude could turn those things on with her mind."

  
There is a frown, vaguely hiding a pout, as Jon thumbs back over the button, turns it off with a frustrated click of his tongue,  
  
" _I'm_ not turning them on," he deflects, throwing an accusatory glance at the archaic piece of plastic.  
  
" _Very_ intriguing. Did you think that was going to make it less spooky, Jon?"  
  
"I didn't--nevermind, you can...bother me about it later. I’ve got something else I assume you’re going to be much more happy about.”  
  
Curiosity quickly piqued, Gerard pads his way over to Jon’s desk, watching as he slides a hand back over his chair and into his coat pocket.  
  
“Here.”  
  
It takes Gerard a moment to process the thick stack of bills currently being held out to him, drooping under its own weight as it sags over the edge of Jon’s hand.  
  
“You’ve got me on payroll already?” Gerard clicks his tongue, lays a finger under the pile without pulling it out of Jon’s hand.  
  
“Not…entirely. I thought about– what you said, about having some amount of _independence_. Especially in the interest of exhibiting some more trust, I…thought this was more or less fair.”  
  
Gerard’s finger pauses its hefting of the money as his eyes cut over Jon, narrow with focus.  
  
“Christ. This is yours?”  
  
“It won’t be in a second when you stop making me hold my hand out in the air. I’m getting sore, you know.”  
  
“I can’t take this.”  
  
Jon makes an effort to waggle it enticingly, although it occurs to him too late that that might be less humorous and more insulting.  
  
“It’s…fine?” He reassures, trying not to jostle it in Gerard’s direction a second time,  
  
“If it’s going to be that much of an issue you can make some promise to pay it back, but I spend a lot more time between bookshelves than I do investing in new furniture and remodeling a flat I don’t use. Plus, as far as I’m concerned you’re…more or less an employee here, aren’t you? Official hiring process aside, I think I’m allowed to compensate you.”  
  
This finally earns a snort from Gerard, a reluctant acceptance of the cash into his hands, although he holds it gingerly, as if he’s still uncommitted.  
  
“Fine. You win. If it was some weird pity thing for the dissolved arm we were gonna have a row, honestly.” He tucks the money into one of many pockets going up and down his leg, leaving his hand inside with it.  
  
“Oh, relax. Money comes from such an unsavory source around here I would think you’d be _happy_ to rearrange it.”  
  
“You’re telling _me_ to relax, are you?” Gerard scoffs, and he catches the familiar twitch of Jon’s lip as he resumes his writing.  
  
“Spend a little more time down here and I’m sure I’ll rub off on you…alleviate some of that _needless tension_ you’re always carrying around with you.”  
  
And then Jon does not hide the quirk of his lips, peeking up conspiratorially at Gerry with an eyebrow arched over the rim of his glasses. Gerard feels the familiar need to reorganize his hair as he breaks eyes too quickly, pops his feet over the floorboards as he makes his way towards the door.  
  
At the threshold he stops, resting on the door frame as he pulls his head back in to appraise Jon for a moment,  
  
“What are you getting up to today?”  
  
“Oh, you’re– yes, I suppose you would want to get out first thing, then. Just– the usual, permitted nothing _extracurricular_ comes to bother me.”  
  
Gerry snorts, hand still gripping the door frame,  
  
“Right. Not gonna ask me what I’m up to, huh?”  
  
“Oh, I wasn’t sure it was– got something exciting planned?”  
  
“Mind your own business.” Gerard quips back immediately, taunting glimmer of piercings as he grins, disappears with a final accusation of, “Nosy.”  
  
And if Gerry had known Jon’s reaction, he would have been sad to find out he missed it: the peek of defiant tongue over his lower lip at the now-empty door frame before the tape recorder clicked itself back into existence.  
  


* * *

  
It comes on subtly, sometimes: misplaced irritability and paranoid lapses of memory, forgetting his objectives and slowly become an exposure-broiled trigger primed for fight, or flight, or freeze. When it is a tumble of old wood after a creak in the floor, it’s the familiar demon-hounded pulse of fight that grabs a nearby pipe, whips it at the source of the noise. Gerard vaguely entertains the idea of feeling bad for the rat that scurries away from the source of excitement, clearly terrified. Mostly, though, he feels a vague sense of terror, too familiar, and begs for the unclouding of his mind so he can get out as fast as possible. Priming his body and mind for fight is a skill: developed over years of learning how to keep himself safe, keep his body moving when seconds expand, become the chasm between life or death. But in his bones is a well-oiled mechanism of terrified stillness, of breath held under the onslaught of a terror from which there is no escape.  
  
When there is a figure at the door, lanky and tense while Gerard’s arms are buried in his old closet, freeze returns, claws static into his bones, makes brittle his soul and skin. The silent prayers that expression and pose communicate attention and understanding, the cloak stretched over the shaking horror of vulnerability. It does not matter for a while that the visitor is young, pierced and pock-marked and hunched in a garish orange coat, doe-eyed and friendly. It doesn’t matter after they’re gone, either, conversation a vague imprint on Gerard’s mind as his body struggles to reset, acclimate to the reality of this home after his mother.  
  
He finds what he needs, and moves out the door of what used to be his room, what will always and never have been his room. The kid in the coat looks up vaguely from their phone, knapsack curled into itself on the wall and chip bags dotting the floor around it. Gerard thinks maybe he should apologize for staring in visceral terror at a polite set of questions, say enjoy living here more than I did, say maybe it’s haunted and don’t get possessed. But his terror carries him forward, squeezes conversation in his throat and clutches the bulk of his social acuity, twists it painfully, and all he manages is an off-beat, “seeya”, surly and vague as he trudges through the door.

* * *

  
It is when Jon has already thrown himself into the back office and shoved his arm forward on an insight-directed whim that he belatedly registers the impact of Gerry, black-clad and heavy against the aging concrete of the office walls behind him. He turns, small hiccup of disorientation running through his mind, and pulls in the image of Gerard: thick black coat and hands lightly clenched over both knees, the dense framing of his face in hair that matches the imprint on his mind Gerry’s related statements had always left with him. As his eyes trace the light sticking of strands of hair to skin, the uncontrolled quiver of his breaths in and out, he puts it together, and blanches.  
  
“God, sorry, Gerry, I– is this something I shouldn’t have barged in on or something I’m…going to make more unpleasant by making a whole thing of?” Hands clutch together at Jon’s chest as he asks this, stuck by his obliviousness between two preferable remedies to the situation. Gerry doesn’t have a reply for a second, just eyelids pinched shut in focus, the rumble of tear over cheek as he struggles to collect himself semi-silently. The laugh he gives is weak, wet after a struggled inhale, a fleeting attempt to meet Jon’s eyes.  
  
“Sort of fucked both of those approaches up already, haven’t you?”  
  
“I suppose, yes, I just– are you…are you alright? Do you want me to leave?”  
  
Another exhale, slow and methodical, followed by a pause resting above the flow of feelings from the eyes, the cleaning of mind.  
  
“Think I sort of lost the game of taking care of this subtly. Thought I might actually get away with crying about my mum in a black trench coat in broad daylight. Like it’s not ridiculous enough I’m destined to get caught.”  
  
Jon fidgets, hand over hand, watches the careful breaths still winding in and out of Gerard as he tries to untangle himself gently.  
  
“You may…cry in whatever you like.” He offers, feels the limp attempt at reassurance dropping, clumsy, from his lips.  
  
“Gave me a weird look when you got in here. I know how it looks.” And it’s with a strained smile, eyes away from Jon, lightly angry under amusement as he look at wall through water. Jon tugs his sleeve, rolls his thoughts over his tongue and his words through his brain before he settles, explains:  
  
“You just took me by surprise, looking all of a sudden like– so much how I had pictured you? Before?”  
  
And Gerard’s eyes do pop open at this, whip up to Jon’s before he can catch himself, both of them breaking the contact without lingering.  
  
“I just mean that, I _read_ about you a lot before, ah, before actually meeting you. Walking in and sort of– forgetting, almost? That I was expecting you back? So it was like you, dropped in from the back of my mind for a second there, sort of gave me a flash of just being a bit– starstruck?”  
  
The wide-eyed contact is maintained for a moment this time, mortified and gobsmacked, Jon breaking first and fumbling spectacularly,  
  
“That’s not the right word. You know what I mean,”  
  
“ _Christ_ –”  
  
“It was a…misuse of the term, I’m not trying to idolize someone I’m working with it’s just sometimes easy to forget that, well, you’re someone that had a bit of a, ah, reputation before I met you, is all, that, ah–”  
  
“Jesus, Jon–”  
  
“It was just shocking for a moment, um, c-clash of worlds? I didn’t mean to make you feel…weird?” He ventures, hands knit together and eyebrows doing the same; anxious intertwining of the self.  
  
“It’s– fine, just…unexpected. Didn’t expect to get celebrity status getting ruined by my mother for a couple of decades.”

And there is a note here, plucked in his heart, that reminds him, curls Gerry’s eyebrows down into himself as the impact of a memory hits, blows the cover off another attempt to clean house. He lets out a sigh this time, frustrated and low, throwing his head behind his hair as it moves into his palms. Jon is stuck again, tethered to the directionless idea of responsibility, in the intangible framework of easing the pain of another. He takes a step away, pauses, turns, slides his heel with all the decision of a sputtering engine and a dying flame before stubbornly re-igniting, lowering himself down beside Gerry. He remembers, tries to organize and understand, lays a hand on Gerry’s shoulder in a fabrication of the night before, under the memory of tightly gripping fingertips thrown over his own. The return is slower this time, interrupted by thought and feeling, and when Gerry’s hand rolls over Jon’s it is firm, but not desperate, soft pressure periodically disrupted with the clenching of a processing mind. Jon’s eyes glance over Gerry’s hand, the tight black strands of ink that run down his knuckles, the chipping black paint on his nails and the way the deep brown skin surrounding them strains lighter as his fingertips press onto Jon, release. The open blackness of the eyes spot him up and down, soak in his surroundings and trace lines for Jon’s eyes to follow along each finger, over the curve of his wrist when surrogate eye contact proves uninteresting: less relevant than the form of his bones, the spirit of his muscle. Jon tries something vaguely reassuring, a light rub of thumb over Gerry’s shoulder and a squeeze that feels ridiculous as he plans it out and excecutes it before feeling the reassuring pressure on the back of his hand. Then the spark of insight, small flicker ripped lightly across his mind, the inevitable blurt of knowledge:  
  
“You went to your old house.”  
  
A lowering of Gerard’s shoulder under Jon’s hand as he sighs, a stilling of the hand atop it before Gerry slides it off, holds it in his lap.  
  
“Yeah.” Is what he manages, fingers rubbing along the cuff of his jacket: worn down in a pattern of the same movement over years and years that Jon sees playing out as he watches Gerry’s hand run the practiced course.  
  
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to– see that, it was…tertiary knowledge that made it somewhat obvious.”  
  
“I’m sure it was a bit obvious regardless. Still a bit of an _exposed nerve_ about it if you don’t mind, though.”  
  
“I know. I didn’t mean to…be so vocal about having realized. I’m just not used to being able to, ah, see much of anything from you? Took me a bit by surprise.”  
  
“I’m full of surprises today, huh?”  
  
Nerves pull in Jon’s throat, allowing him to squeeze out a, “Don’t–” as his hand pulls up, hesitates for just a second in the air,  
  
“Don’t be an ass.” He scolds, rubs his hand roughly into the back of Gerry’s hair. Gerry yelps, then laughs, relieved jump pulling up from Jon’s stomach in response.  
  
“Pretty bold, there.” Gerry turns, smile genuine under sad eyes, Jon watching the slow roll of saline over the hill of Gerard’s cheek, the valley of his mouth’s corner, sweeping over his chin. He tries to shake off what he assumes is an underlying fascination with pain, pushes past the unpleasant feelings he does not have the time to entertain.  
  
“I thought maybe a less…direct approach might be a little more uplifting.”  
  
“Not a bad guess. Real scholarly evaluation there.”  
  
“I’m sure I’ll owe a great psychic debt for the resources expended on that insight.” Jon deadpans in return, delights in the rolling laugh from Gerry as he wipes his eyes. He rolls his head over his shoulder, then, reaches onto a neighbouring shelf and grabs a familiar ceramic cup on a saucer.  
  
“Let’s see if this is ice cold, huh?”  
  
The light wince Jon watches his face pull into on the first sip confirms that it absolutely is. Ideas knock around Jon’s mind as he watches the cup, the lessening of tension in Gerard’s shoulders, the fall of hair over one side of his face, runs him back through the preceding moments to evaluate.  
  
“I can…leave you alone if you need in the future, if it helps. I probably should have been paying enough attention to realize I hadn’t left to door closed. Considering I’ve had things breaking in here before…”  
  
“Thinking about how I snuck a cup of tea in here without you picking up on it, space cadet?” Gerard smirks at him over the lip of the cup, takes another tepid sip. He doesn’t let Jon open his mouth before he continues,  
  
“Anyway, it’s– fine, honestly. Spent enough time running through this same cycle in random hotels and locked up in my room in my life. Don’t actually mind some company every once in a while, frankly. Maybe a little change in the routine will let me feel like I’m actually making progress for once.” He snorts, pulls the swirling cup of tea down into his lap, stares at the broken film of cream swirling on top. Jon joins him in this for reasons he can’t completely understand, watching the silent swirl of curdled dairy surrounded by the careful pressure of Gerry’s hands.  
  
“It was because of her, you know.” Gerard cuts through the meditative silence, keeps time with the break of fat membrane as his hand lightly twitches, neither motion lost to Jon. His eyes don’t leave Gerard’s hands for a moment, then scatter up his arms, over his jewelry, across the folds of his outfit to return a voice back to his face.  
  
“What?” Falls lamely out of him, tumbles the small distance between himself and Gerard, rolls over his shoulder and splats against the wall. Gerard just pulls a laugh, small and sad, but patient, before he clarifies.  
  
“The tea. The _preparation_ you were so shocked about, anyway. The heavier the cream, the longer it’ll stay in the fridge, the less you need to use at a time. Mum didn’t really stock the kitchen with my interests in mind, she was already being sustained by her work pretty early on as I can remember. So there wasn’t a lot in the house to eat except things that would stay. A lot of rice, and a lot tea, and not much else, frankly. And tea stays, sure, but it doesn’t taste particularly good when it’s been sitting in a dusty death house for years, so…you improvise. Sugar to liven up the horrible dustiness, cream to cut through the acidity. Cream’s got more fat, too, could suck a bit more calories out of something without spending too much time downstairs being ‘indulgent' trying to feed mys–”  
  
Jon’s hand is not coordinated when he slides it over Gerard’s mouth, impulsive and clumsy, rolled over with a lack of foresight that sends his ring finger under Gerry’s lip and pokes awkwardly onto one of his teeth. Gerard feels the weight of it, feels the back end of a word trapped on his tongue as Jon looks over apologetically, gently lowers his hand.  
  
“Gerry, you– you _have_ to stop telling me about your trauma around your mother.”  
  
There is a pleading to Jon’s demand that twists into Gerard, and the “ _What_?” he spits in return is incredulous and angry: clumsy disguises for shock and hurt.  
  
“I don’t mean– I don’t want you to feel that you can’t talk to me, a-about your life? About your past, but your mother, she– she’s so profoundly immersed in all this, everything you say about her can– even if it’s about just you being a child or a teenager experiencing a harmful parental figure you– you _have_ to understand that it feeds the eye because of what she is. I don’t want to sit here and find your pain–” Jon struggles for a diplomatic turn of phrase, fails to find it:  
  
“…Appetizing. I don’t want you…telling me things because I make you feel the urge to, either. I know I didn’t ask but I don’t always– need to? I know just being around something connected to this institute can…make you want to share things you don’t actually want to share.”  
  
Gerard’s lip is tight, but the anger has fallen from his eyes as he allows the ghost of hurt to stay, watching the Activist fret. He drops his shoulders, leans back on his hand before he sighs our his reply,  
  
“Can’t just be that you’re easy to talk to?”  
  
“I’m _certain_ that’s not the case.”  
  
Gerard laughs, Jon doesn’t. He just manages a dry smile, belated and hollow, before the corners of his mouth drop back down.  
  
“I haven’t– _seen_ you yet, and I assume you haven’t seen me yet, either, but you will. If I had realized–”  
  
Jon sighs, arms crossing as he looks away,  
  
“Well. It’s not like I can really make that promise anymore, anyway, is it? Just– you will see me in your dreams when you relive the trauma of what you’ve told me about her. It’s what I do now. Just watch people relive the worst moments of their lives, voyeur into their private agony, night after night. If you see me, and you will see me, I just– I want you to at least know what I’m going to see now. I think I owe you some– transparency, around what I am and what talking to me can do to you.”  
  
And Jon has returned his eyes to Gerard, sad and tired: the Jon special. Gerard just shrugs, takes another sip of lukewarm tea.  
  
“I mean, I don’t dream about much else _besides_ my mother. Might be nice to have some company there, too.”  
  
“You _can’t_ be serious–”  
  
“Why not? Clearly I’m inclined to tell you all this anyway. Not like I’m particularly concerned about you knowing, evidently.” He cuts another smirk at Jon, obfuscated still by the lip of the cup and long stands of stubborn hair. The look Jon returns is incredulous.  
  
“It’s nothing like just telling someone about your history, Gerry, it’s–”  
  
“Real spooky. Some yucky monster sort of stuff, yeah. I get it. I’m not exactly unfamiliar with the whole world I’m immersed in, you know. Promise I won’t hold it against you if you jump out from behind my mum and yell 'boo’ while I’m taking a nap.”  
  
Small, abbreviated sounds pop out of Jon, the beginnings of retorts as he throws up his hands, rethinks, re-arranges, repeats. He finally gives up on the concept of argument, shoulders dropping in time with his previously gesticulating hands.  
  
“I think…I’m something a bit more _upsetting_ than that, but I suppose I can’t press the issue. Um– consider yourself warned, I guess?” And a smile does crawl back over Jon as he looks up, sheepish and lopsided.  
  
“Noted. It’s not, uh– it’s not like I’ve been dreaming much since I got brought back, frankly.” Gerard shrugs,  
  
“Like I said, if it happens, might just be nice to have some company.”  
  
Jon doesn’t move to retort this time, just watches as Gerry drains the end of his tea, stares into the bottom of the cup for a moment, contemplative. Jon pulls himself back up, moves to return to his search for a statement, but pauses on his way back to the shelf.  
  
“That person didn’t think you were being rude, by the way. The one in your old house.”  
  
Gerard starts, small but visible as he looks up.  
  
“That’s…good to hear, I guess.”  
  
“I’d hope so. You were worried about it.”  
  
Gerard snorts. “I _was_ , was I?”  
  
“Sorry, I just– I’m not exactly intuitive enough to suss that out on my own. Might as well be straightforward about where I’m 'seeing’ things from, right? Anyway they– just figured you were a bit stressed. Don’t think they took it personally.”  
  
“Happy to hear it.” And he is, but he spins a little mockery into the comment regardless. And when Jon speaks again there is that distant fuzziness in his voice, the capture of ideas as he’s compelled to ask,  
  
“As far as I understood, your old house had been occupied by new tenants for the last few years, but...it certainly didn’t look that way, I don’t suppose you–”  
  
“Kept tabs on it while I was in the ground? Can’t say I did.”  
  
“Right…right.” Jon concedes, shakes off the remnants of intrigue from the sliver of Gerry’s house slipped into his mind,  
  
“I don’t feel particularly inclined to investigate whatever happened, there. Already had enough of your mother’s legacy for one lifetime, frankly.”  
  
“Yeah. She was like that.”  
  
Small laughs, polite and strained, as Jon returns to digging through piles of statements and Gerard soaks in the after-burn of his emotional exhaustion. His voice cuts through it, finally, pulls Jon’s attention away from a statement wedged between the back of a bookcase and its poorly built shelving:  
  
“Jon, can I…use one of your tape recorders if you’re out doing eyeball errands again? Got some tapes from home I’m sort of ancy to listen to, honestly. Promise I’ll be nice to it.”  
  
“Wouldn’t entirely blame you if you didn’t, frankly.” Jon laughs, dry but fond, continues:  
  
“The perks of quasi-employment, right? Be my guest. Use whatever you like. Just, ah, don’t tear apart anything else that’s wired straight to my brain, I suppose.” Their smile is shared, light contact of eyes as Jon walks past, rigid clutch of paper to his chest before he looks forward and disappears through the door.

* * *

  
Jon’s conversation with Basira is dry, a slow trudge through information that leaves him exhausted with the prospect of more investigation without the promise of progress. Disquiet claws at the base of his mind as Basira runs through potential objectives, pulls together leads that fall apart as she tries to connect the edges, interlock the relevancy. She is quiet on the subject of her informant, deflective when pressed by Jon about the tap of her information run dry. “Sustained some injuries,” is all she’ll give him, rumble of energy with no purpose growing under her skin, coagulating without direction.  
  
“You seem nervous.” Jon pitches as he watches her flip through the same three pages of information, curl of anger knit into her face as she tries to knead trajectory from unchanged paper.  
  
“Reckon you should be, too, Jon.” She cuts back, thumb still jammed between pages, gripping useless dialect and frivolous jargon. Daisy sits across from them, two tables away, eyes tracking words she does not read as she listens, traces the familiar tempo of Basira’s misplaced ambition.  
  
“I am. But that’s– I’m used to it.”  
  
“Maybe you should stop being used to it, then. Major player comes into our institute right when a major source of information gets mysteriously injured. That tells me something’s happening– something that involves us. You’re sure we can trust him, Jon?”  
  
“Positive.” Comes, reflexive and certain. Daisy clicks her tongue, partnered with Basira’s frown.  
  
“Fine. Better hope he’s ready for whatever’s coming, then. Because I’m sure it’s something bad.”  
  
“We sure that’s not just the feeling of this place, Basira?” Daisy does not raise her eyes, flips another page of the book and absorbs little besides the gruesome illustration on the left hand side of the page, a medieval woodcut of archaic torture. She smiles inwardly, adds on:  
  
“Maybe the trips out were helping your mood out as much as our objectives. It doesn’t exactly feel good to be trapped in here all day, does it?”  
  
Basira moves her mouth to speak, slips under Jon’s interjection as she forms her thoughts too slowly,  
  
“No, Basira’s right. I feel it too.”  
  
He runs his eyes over the words under Basira’s hand, reflected on the gold of her rings, distorted and decorative. Tries to see, feels his mind tumble uselessly, windswept debris.  
  
“Feeling doesn’t always translate into knowing, though, I suppose.” He sighs,  
  
“For the nerves, um– have you tried running with Melanie? I know she’s always, ah, 'burning off steam’ as she puts it…”  
  
“Used to.” Basira cuts, quick closing of book kicking a light layer of dust into the air,  
  
“I get the feeling she’s not keen on having me do it anymore. She always seems to get done with it right when I ask her if she’s planning on going out.”  
  
“Maybe she gets tired of you hassling her about her progress every time you talk to her.” Daisy snickers, traces a line of black ink blood absentmindedly.  
  
“It’s not hassling to ask her how she’s doing. She’s in therapy because she’s _trying_ to make progress, Daisy. I think I’m allowed to be interested.”  
  
Daisy snorts in response. “Sure. Let me know if that warms her up to you any time soon. Won’t make her feel like she’s got a sergeant breathing down her throat every time you grill her about progress.”  
  
“I am not like that when I talk to her.”  
  
“You like a project, Basira, is all I’m saying.” And Daisy finally looks up at this, wry smile wrinkling into her cheeks, eyes working to burrow into Basira’s core. Basira just moves her eyes, fiddles a bracelet in response,  
  
“She’s not a project. Just–”  
  
“A…subject of focus?” Jon pitches in, clumsy, one step behind and out of place. Daisy cackles for a reason Jon does not catch, Basira cutting her eyes at her in return. She swings them back to Jon, still gripping a bracelet in the tension between her finger and thumb.  
  
“Why don’t you let me worry about my own stress levels, Jon?” She cuts, nerve pinched and Daisy biting her cheek behind her,  
  
“I’m sure if we can figure out what’s coming I’ll be a hell of a lot less stressed anyway.”  
  
“Um– sure, Basira.” Jon sighs, mirrors the tension Basira wears by rubbing the back of his neck, re-organizing the cuff of his sleeve. The humour falls from Basira in levels he does not anticipate, camaraderie short-lived with her only in peacetime, he feels: an ungraspable state of being under their current jurisdiction. He just lets out another squeeze of tension on a breath, swivels and turns as he feels the interplay of personas run sour beneath the institute roof: cyclical and preordained, scored by a low, mocking laugh he does not understand.

* * *

 

Gerard is leaning against Jon’s desk when he returns, head nodding softly with his hands jammed into the pockets of his coat. As Jon walks closer, he sees the steadily spinning mechanisms on the inside of the tape recorder, hears the soft chaos of its contents: low dirge of instrumentation and the soft strain of vocals rumbling out from beneath it. Jon holds in a laugh as he runs his eyes over Gerard’s excessive display of decorum, politely self-contained as he curls in on himself, lightly mouthing the occasional lyric. This hold releases the moment Gerard is swept away, however, throwing his head halfway down his torso and ripping his arms excitedly out of their respective pockets, pulling a thrilled laugh from the previously clenched jaw of Jon. Gerard’s head swings up, wide-eyed and hair-haloed, teeth bared in a mouth still halfway through a lyric. Jon has to throw a hand over his mouth not to laugh even harder at Gerry’s transparently mortified face, only fails to do so partially as he chokes on a string of laughs behind his palm.  
  
“Some important information on those tapes, was there?” He grins, hand still blocking rows of teeth, humour-exposed.  
  
“I never said there was gonna be something productive on these. You’re the one who’s all horny for productivity around here, not me.”  
  
“Ah, just let me come to my own predictable conclusion, did you?”  
  
Gerry smirks, hands back to weighing on the lining of his pockets,  
  
“I didn’t accuse you of being predictable, either. Could of asked if you were feeling curious. I wouldn’t have stopped you.”  
  
“Frankly, I never imagined anyone but the institute was still using tapes. I don’t usually have the benefit of feeling this current.”  
  
“What? No, tapes are great - the sound is all a part of a particular time and place and feeling, you know? I’m sure the Eye wouldn’t find statements half as juicy without all that crackle and fuzz.”  
  
Jon snorts, watches the rhythmic bounce of one of Gerry’s legs, body still lightly linked to the sounds rolling out from the cheap plastic speaker.  
  
“I’m sort-of surprised to see you so contained with it, frankly.” Jon quips, catches the tail end of another softly mouthed lyric,  
  
“Thought there was a bit more excitement to listening to this sort of thing.”  
  
“Challenging my credentials, are you?” Gerard smirks, finally turns his body to face Jon entirely, hip resting on the lip of the desk,  
  
“Weird and quiet in here, you know. Don’t want to feel like I’m disturbing the atmosphere.”  
  
Jon pulls a grin, lightly taunting, runs his eyes over the same energy playing over Gerry’s mouth,  
  
“Well, then, you officially have my blessing to do so, Gerry.”  
  
Gerard breaks, crack of a laugh as he turns, dials the volume up enough to properly fill the space around them, hugging walls without rattling, sound stretching just far enough. Audible, angry, but not disruptive as the low growls and frantic strings bounce into Jon’s ears, light up the base of his mind with unfamiliar unease, intrigue.  
  
“Slightly more tonally appropriate, yeah?” Gerard asks, rolls his hip lightly on the side of the desk. Jon takes a spot on the opposite corner, leans his hand back on the wooden surface as he internally resigns to an unproductive afternoon.  
  
“More in line with my expectations for the genre, anyway. Aren’t you supposed to be slamming your brain around inside your head, as well?” Nervous, pitchy laugh as Jon flirts with the edge of his social comfort zone, light social terror as he meets Gerard’s eyes over a lopsided grin,  
  
“Never understood the motivations behind that, if I’m being honest.”  
  
Gerard makes a point of running his eyes up Jon: the rigid sensibility of his pressed trousers and sensible shoes, the collegiate embrace of his thick sweater layered over crisp button-up, the comically thick rims and lenses of his glasses, nose bridge divots from a lifetime of bookishness, and the way his hand grips his elbow, slender fingers grasping for security even under the blanket of relaxed conversation. The grey-streaked hair perpetually falling over one eye dampens the effect somewhat, a bit of attractive dishevelling paired with the patchy stubble and faded scars, but Gerry doesn’t linger on it: just piques an eyebrow for effect and responds,  
  
“You don’t say.”  
  
And pushes himself off the desk, feet braced wide with his hands still committed to the lining of his pockets.  
  
“It’s all about how it moves through you, right? Brain’s what controls all the feeling in you, isn’t it? It’s gonna get the most out of being a part of an experience.”  
  
“I suppose I can vaguely understand the appeal of having something move its energy through you.” Jon concedes, watches the small rock of Gerry on the balls of his feet: almost nervous, if Jon felt he had the capacity for it. Gerard’s eyes then whip to one side as his arms pull out of their sanctuaries, uselessly shove leather sleeves up towards elbows.  
  
“There’s that whole myth it causes brain damage, too. 'More than drinking’ my ass.” He laughs, eyes still cut across the room as he clicks his tongue. The music swells behind him, almost comical against the casual conversation, and Gerard lets his eyes slide back over Jon for just a moment,  
  
“Can’t imagine old cock 'n’ eyeballs would appreciate that much, right?”  
  
And he laughs, uneven, catching in his throat as he finally throws his head forward, back, rhythm quickly knit into the motion as his hair catches the belated momentum. Jon’s laugh in turn is that shaky staccato, warbled and delightful as he throws a hand up to stop it. He just catches the stubborn smile under the rumble of Gerard’s hair, feels the bubbling of delight at the energy of the scene before him. Watches the depth of his enjoyment as his head spins a hectic circle, encased in a furious spiral of hair within the static crackle of the running tape. Jon’s laugh is contagious, foreign pull of excitement from a mire of stress, and Gerry stumbles under the force of his rattling brain, leans back on the desk with a shared spit of humour.  
  
And Gerry runs a hand over his head, pulls back a thick chunk of hair as he feels that maybe his face can still sweat a bit, and he almost misses it as his eyes drift towards the window: Jon’s sudden rapt attention, eyes locked on the spinning wheels of the tape before he throws his head forward, then back, grabbing it immediately as he straightens out,  
  
“God, no– that felt absurd.”  
  
“You’re not actually supposed to try and get brain damage, Jon.” Gerry quips, small flash of thrill at the Archival unhinging laid out before him. Jon is sheepish, transparently thrilled under the slap of grey hair now flung over his head from the single movement. Gerry lays a hand on the volume knob beside them, buckles under the institute's atmosphere as he turns it, keeping his eyes on Jon's as he leans conspiratorially into the space around him.  
  
"Could I...drag you somewhere with me tonight?"  
  
"Somewhere...important?  
  
"Not at all." Gerard laughs, rolls himself back onto his elbows, weight dropping back to the lip of the desk,  
  
"Show tonight I wanna catch." He confesses, rolls a smile back onto Jon,  
  
"No fun going alone, frankly."  
  
"You want to drag me to a metal show."  
  
"Aw, come on. Being an eyeball freak's all about learning new and exciting things, isn't it? Maybe someone will get their teeth knocked out and you can ask them about it."  
  
"I'm not an eyeball freak--" Jon struggles to retort before catching the pinch of Gerard's eyebrows -- nervous and uneven -- and deflates; crawls his bony fingers up the arm of his sweater,  
  
"You...actually want me to come, don't you?"  
  
The smile is shaky, eye contact always dropping, dropping, dropping away: cyclical gears of interaction's facets,  
  
"Honestly, after last night, the idea of being alone at night is sort of--"  
  
“Hey, Jon.”  
  
It’s a knock on the door frame and the small frame of Melanie with it: compact burst of energy and tension. Jon doesn’t feel her; unaligned and spiritually sightless, wisp of smoke on the tail of agonizing wound in her spirit's rebirth. But she hovers at the door with the same familiar simmer of anger, singes the ends of the olive branch she continually struggles to extend:  
  
“Basira and Daisy are going out for a bite. You interested at all?”  
  
“Um– just some chips, is fine?” Jon ventures, flush behind the still-mussed fringe of grey and brown, and Melanie points emphatically down the hall,  
  
“Better catch up with them, then.”  
  
“What? You’re not–”  
  
Melanie scoffs, drops her hand,  
  
“I’m not running back up there with your order. Go get your own chips.”  
  
An incredulous look from Jon, a space of silence, so she adds:  
  
“You’re going to miss them if you don’t head out, you know.”  
  
“Right,” And he grabs his coat off the back of his chair, clumsy shuffle of arm into sleeve and jumpy step forward before he remembers, turns,  
  
“Gerry, sorry, would you…like anything?”  
  
“Something small, yeah. I’m…” Quick flicker of indecision, dark eyes hovering over Melanie before quick resolve:  
  
“I’m…a little curious if I can still eat like this.”  
  
And Jon nods, serious and still ramming hand into sleeve as he all but runs out the door. Gerard and Melanie share silence, a quick look: trepidation folding under amusement.  
  
“That…was interesting.” Melanie lobs, still braced against the door frame across a deep breath of space.  
  
“Yeah. Well.” Gerard shrugs back, exaggerates the weight of his lean on the wood of the desk. Melanie just rolls her eyes, pushes her shoulder against the warp of the door frame and hesitates, focus dropping on the floor like a marble.  
  
"I've never seen him like that." She confesses, focus rolled along the crack of the wood, threatening at the toe of Gerry's boot. She runs along a tooth with her tongue, mind still a slow spin of idea,  
  
"I think I've sort-of been...underestimating his capacity for humanity."  
  
"Christ, he's not that bad." Gerry intones, spun back to frown at her from under the weight of his hair. The smile Melanie returns is fondly pitying.  
  
"Hey...let me give you one piece of advice, alright? Don't...tell Basira what you are."  
  
Small surprise over eyes, then absorption, a light nod as Gerry takes it in,  
  
"Sure. Thanks."  
  
"No problem. You fuck that up, I didn't say a thing, though, right?"  
  
"Yeah," Gerry smirks, finally runs his eyes up to meet her, "I get how this works."  
  
"Good." Melanie snorts, kicks the back of one trainer with another as she eyeballs the hallway,  
  
"I'm back to not being your friend, then, I guess." And it's said lightly, small bite and sarcastic smile. And as she pops back out of view, a "have fun at your concert" rolls into Gerry's ears on the heels of a laugh, gentle slap of her shoes echoing down the hall.


	5. iv. Kā

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just want to note that the avatar who's killed in this chapter is a teenage girl and it's described somewhat viscerally. Also, a character who doesn't appear in the fic is outed as trans by someone babbling under casual compulsion. Thought both were worth a warning, happy reading fellas

"Ready?"

It is Gerry's voice that rumbles unexpectedly into his ear, rips him from the meandering of his mind and shocks him back into reality. Gerry is leaned over the back of Jon's chair, creak of wood under his palms as he leans his weight over the Archivist's back, drops a waterfall of black over one side of his face. The Archivist exhales, comically laboured, and turns around to face him.

"I think you're abusing your ability to avoid detection at this point, frankly."

"Sure you would too, if you could sneak up on something all-seeing."

"I'm _hardly_ that advanced, yet, just...a bit more _perceptive_ than all your slinking around generally makes me feel."

Gerry snorts, spins around to the front of Jon's desk, jump of his step revealing more excitement than the intended nonchalance of his pocket-buried fists. Jon keeps this observation to himself, opts instead to push himself off of his desk, over to a jacket hanging on the wall behind him that he slips into. Gerry's eyes slip up him, back down, amused cock of a pierced eyebrow.

"That's cute. Didn't expect you to dress for the occasion."

Jon fails to hide his flush and scowl, makes an angry mirror of Gerry's pocketed hands as he darts his eyes to one side. His outfit is the usual amount of professional: pressed pants and collars peeking out from under a thick sweater, but the shift in overall _hue_ does not escape him. Black sweater, black pants, dark grey flannel poking defiantly out at all angles, and a leather jacket Gerry is delighted to see Jon had either previously owned, or gone out of his way to _borrow_. He clicks his tongue after he takes it all in, just to rub it in. Jon rolls his eyes.

"Pardon _me_ for attempting to embrace the spirit of the evening. I assumed I should look at least _somewhat_ integrated into the crowd if possible."

"I promise you look _lovely_ ," Gerry oozes, sickly sweet and mocking,

"I hope you know no one's _actually_ going to be monitoring what you wear though. You're going to stick out a lot less than you're expecting."

"Ah, so I've gone to all the excruciating trouble of owning a pair of black pants for nothing, then, have I?" Jon parries back, overtakes Gerry on the way to the door. Turns to lean on the frame, hitching eyebrows that leave Gerard bizarrely silent.

" _Ready_?" Jon grins, turns it into a laugh as Gerry flips him off, shoves Jon's arm as he walks past, out of the archives.

* * *

There's a cigarette in his hand that Jon watches: the slow, methodical movements of Gerard's hands when he talks, punctuated with slow, pensive drags. Jon clutches his own between bony fingers, grips the sides of his arms in a tight caricature of a man who should have worn another jacket.

"Alright, so what I figure is--" Gerard has the butt of the cigarette clamped in one side of his mouth as he begins this thought, both hands busy gesturing in the direction of the venue as they walk,

"If you're in a reasonable distance, only one main exit, I can't get eyeballed out of there without you noticing, right? So _you_ \--" And Jon watches it return to his hands after an enthusiastic drag, move down in a trail of smoke as he gestures to Jon,

"--Don't have to get in the thick of it or anything -- unless, of course, you're jonesing to get in there with me, in which case, be my guest." He pulls a crooked smile down at Jon with this, flicks the burnt roll of cotton over his left shoulder.

"I'm sure I'll be... _just_ fine as far away from any action as I can get." Jon confesses, and there's less playfulness in his tone than he was aiming for. He shoves his smoke-free hand into a pocket, blames his brusque response on the cold. When he looks up a moment later, Gerry has sped up in front of him, walking backwards with his eyes tracing the tight posture of Jon.

"You're not nervous, are you?"

"I'm not _nervous_ \--" The Archivist transparently lies, fingers conspicuously tight on one end of his cigarette.

"You know no one's going to be paying all that much attention to you, right? Not a lot of social obligation you have to fill here, I promise."

Jon snorts. " _I'll_ be the judge of what social obligations I may or may not be failing at, thank you very much."

Gerry laughs, almost stumbles as he navigates his way backwards down the sidewalk. Jon nurses the small source of warmth pressed to his lips, sucks back the altered air in an attempt at calm. Gerry shoots him a look he finds hard to parse, somewhere between amusement and pity.

"You don't have to stay inside, you know. Totally within the realm of acceptability to stand outside smoking all night. Provided you don't chainsmoke away the entire pack away before we get there."

Jon catches the pop of Gerry's eyebrow as he hovers the unlit end of one cigarette against the smoldering edge of his current project. He falters a bit when he catches it, pulling it away from his mouth only half-lit.

"I...didn't even notice I was doing that."

"I _promise_ it's not going to be that bad, Jon."

"I...believe you." Jon stutters, unconvincing.

"Sure you do. Here, gimme me your number."

"What?" Jon stumbles, watches Gerry fishing around in his pocket as he spins back around to Jon's side.

"Your number. Part of my plan for tonight was to actually be able to get a hold of each other if anything weird happened. So that goes both for me stumbling out of the crowd to stick myself in some haunted torture device, _or_ you getting freaked out when some burly guy spills a beer on you."

Jon flattens his eyes at Gerry at this, unimpressed droop of his expression that Gerry throws up a sleeve not to crack up over.

"I'm going to need another cigarette just from dealing with _you_ at this point, concert be damned."

"It's just funny, is all. Watched you jump around artifact storage on like ten half-baked plans, pretty reckless sort of energy to be getting worried over some regular humans in faded band t-shirts."

"I didn't exactly have an internal _template_ for that kind of fear -- sort-of learn as you go sort of situations. Unfamiliar social situations with behavioural norms I'm not used to? Now _that_ I've had plenty of practice worrying about."

"Yeah, alright, I can get that." Gerry shrugs, moves his attention once again over the tightness on Jon's face,

"I'm not _actually_ bugging you, am I?"

"Oh, only when I think you've got a point."

"Alright, alright, I'll be nice. Sorry. Just promise me you'll let yourself have a _little_ fun so I don't have to feel bad for dragging you here. And give me your number before I forget, promise I'll feel a vibrating pocket if you need out."

"No promises. Here." Jon rattles off his cell number, Gerry biting his tongue for only a moment as he does.

"You'd have to be an avatar of the Eye to actually have your own phone number memorized at this point." He laughs.

"I've had my number memorized since I got this phone. You don't need to be haunted to have a bit of common sense around not relying on technology for information. Surprised you're not more cautious about it, frankly. I'd have expected you to keep information where you can reliably find it."

Gerry smirks, stares at the side of Jon's face until he turns, frowns back up at Gerry.

" _What_?"

And Gerry laughs, appreciates the frustrated pout that stares pointedly up at him, before rattling off every number he'd had since childhood, the numbers of both his exes and the few scattered friends, Gertrude's cell and home phone. Jon's pout evolves into a solid frown.

"Is it _so_ rewarding to consistently fuck with me like this?"

"Only if you can get some amusement out in hindsight. And if you keep making that face like you're in the middle of plotting my murder."

Jon huffs a reluctant laugh, breezes his hand back through his hair as he pointedly avoids eye contact.

"I just think the thrill of murdering a friend might be a tasty informational morsel, don't you? Forgive me for getting snacky."

Gerry shoots him an odd smile, borderline incomprehensible as his fingers key the buttons of his shitty phone, cheap plastic click under his fingertips.

"See? You've got it. Knew I wasn't being _that_ big of an asshole." And he shoves the phone back into his coat pocket, watches the sheepish crawl of a smile over Jon's face,

"You've got my number now, by the way, so no complaining if you have a bad time and don't ring me. I gave you an out."

The buzz rumbles softly in Jon's pocket, sends his hand over the fabric on rehearsed instinct. Gerry laughs when Jon shoves a hand in with it, still lightly wracked with a shiver.

"Not gonna pull it out and make sure it's actually from me? I'm amazed you'd be so lax."

Jon just sighs, comically belaboured as he deadpans back,

" _Trust_ me, Gerry, if I was popular enough for that sort of coincidence, a ritual disrupting the state of reality is genuinely the only explanation I could think of."

Gerry's laugh is swallowed by the crowd as they finally pull into the thick of activity outside the venue, drunk and horribly loud, rumbling of the opening band spitting up at them from the basement door. There is a hand Jon feels, light, on his back, Gerry's palm bracing him lightly as they enter the crowd.

"You don't have to come down if you don't want, really." Gerry offers, and Jon is surprised to recognize the stretch of nerves over his face and voice. He braves an elbow to his ribs, grins up at the nervous face under the waterfall of black hair.

"I'm _fine_ ," He laughs, not admitting the hand on his shoulder is _somewhat_ reassuring in the chaos by the door,

"I've come this far, kind of a waste if I don't even _investigate_ , right?"

And he makes a point of popping his eyes wide when Gerry looks, adjusting his glasses over them for emphasis. He feels the soft curl of Gerry's fingers as he laughs, hand slowly drifting back down as they start down the stairs.

"Just hope you don't get so traumatized by the experience you have to make a statement about the whole night. Think the Eye'll get me in trouble if I take advantage of their Archivist's curiosity."

It's the last grin Gerry pulls back at him before he pushes through the door, volume and energy hitting Jon like a cold wave. He rolls his smuggled-in earplugs between his fingers in a jacket pocket, hoping he can maintain the illusion of enjoyment until Gerry's already waded into the crowd. He doesn't need to wait long, watching the transparent thrill on Gerry's face as he takes in the energy of the basement, watches the electric slap of bodies into one another under the red cellophaned lights. When he turns back to Jon there's that transparent nervousness to the hitch of his brows, eyes pressed into Jon with anxious excitement.

"Sure you're gonna be alright out here?" He asks as a final courtesy, watching the amused curl of Jon's lip as he clings to a basement wall.

"You have my _blessing_ , Gerry. Go flail around all you like."

"I'll dedicate some flailing _just_ to you for that." And after a final glance over his shoulder, he pushes into the thick mire of people with an energy that Jon finds subtly thrilling. Jon wastes no time popping in earplugs, then, and watches the energy of the room around him with some detached interest, belatedly remembers at some point he should probably check the message Gerry had promised to shoot into his phone. As Gerry wades through the crowd, the unread text sits in his pocket, waits to sew the connection between them one stitch tighter:

 

> Hey \m/  
> \- Gerry

* * *

Gerry spares Jon the full gauntlet of concert experience, having skipped the opening act for his sake. He stands, now, in the dark anticipation before the main event, head already in a cloud of bad weed and beer-soaked concrete. A blatantly tripping girl rests a hand on his hair as she pushes her way out, tells him it's pretty like she's staring at the sun, but otherwise he stands in murmer and mildew while he waits. When he feels the buzz in his pocket from a likely _very_ bored Jon he grins, thumbs the phone in his pocket in a moment of stupid excitement before pulling it out to read.

 

> **Jon**  
>    14/04/18, 9:38 PM
> 
> sorry mate. think you got a wrong number

And blanches.

 

> **You**  
>    14/04/18, 9:44 PM
> 
> Youd better be fucking with me
> 
> **Jon**  
>    14/04/18, 9:44 PM
> 
> nope. sorry buddy
> 
> **Jon**  
>    14/04/18, 9:45 PM
> 
> who were you trying to reach?

Gerry feels the familiar creep of impending doom curl up his throat like bile, trying to remind himself he'd listed off a series of numbers an Archivist _ought_ to be able to easily remember, trying to tell himself not every setback is a paranormal cause for alarm. Trying to remember a time that has not been the case.

 

> **You**  
>    14/04/18, 9:45 PM
> 
> Jon if this seriously isnt you I'm about to push back through this fucking crowd
> 
> **You**  
>    14/04/18, 9:45 PM
> 
> You better be fucking around
> 
> **Jon**  
>    14/04/18, 9:46 PM
> 
> nah. this is neil
> 
> **Jon**  
>    14/04/18, 9:46 PM
> 
> cant help you out there

Panic hits the front of his brain before he can talk it down, and he figures maybe he shouldn't: feeling the familiar prickle of omen and coincidence, the rolling tumble in his mind as he stares at the screen. He shoves his phone back into his pocket, scans his eyes back through the line in the crowd he'd taken in, bracing for the worst as he moves to push back out. Another buzz interrupts him, though, before his can arm shove its way forward, disrupts the cascading narrative of his fears:

 

> **Jon**  
>    14/04/18, 9:47 PM
> 
> unless you're some kind of mysterious goth figure of archival legend
> 
> **Jon**  
>    14/04/18, 9:48 PM
> 
> then perhaps we could work something out
> 
> **You**  
>    14/04/18, 9:48 PM
> 
> You absolute fucking dickhead
> 
> **You**  
>    14/04/18, 9:49 PM
> 
> Im seriously gonna kill you for that one when I'm back out of here

Jon clasps a hand to his mouth, giddy with laughter as he watches Gerry taken so badly off guard in real-time. Smile still clung to his lips as he savours the feeling, punches back another reply,

 

> **Jon**  
>    14/04/18, 9:50 PM
> 
> Good luck. You won't be the first to try.
> 
> **You**  
>    14/04/18, 9:51 PM
> 
> If Id had to push my way back out of this spot Id have dragged you back in here with me
> 
> **Jon**  
>    14/04/18, 9:51 PM
> 
> L.O.L.
> 
> **You**  
>    14/04/18, 9:52 PM
> 
> Jon you do not fucking type it out like that you dimwit I dont believe you for a fucking second
> 
> **You**  
>    14/04/18, 9:52 PM
> 
> Youre so full of shit
> 
> **Jon**  
>    14/04/18, 9:52 PM
> 
> It's an initialism, Gerry.
> 
> **Jon**  
>    14/04/18, 9:53 PM
> 
> I don't forget how the English language functions just because I've got a phone in my hand.
> 
> **You**  
>    14/04/18, 9:53 PM
> 
> God youre really gonna bust my balls until I put this back in my pocket huh
> 
> **You**  
>    14/04/18, 9:54 PM
> 
> This your way of telling me to stop staring at my phone and enjoy the show you old coot?
> 
> **Jon**  
>   14/04/18, 9:54 PM
> 
> I hope you do. :-)
> 
> **You**  
>   14/04/18, 9:54 PM
> 
> Dont mock me with that little grin
> 
> **You**  
>    14/04/18, 9:54 PM
> 
> I see right through your weird old man phone act you absolute shit
> 
> **Jon**  
>    14/04/18, 9:55 PM
> 
> I'm using it to convey tone and intent! You might try it so these texts can't be used in court.
> 
> **Jon**  
>   14/04/18, 9:55 PM
> 
> Those are some pretty serious threats, there, Gerry.
> 
> **You**  
>   14/04/18, 9:55 PM
> 
> Eat my ass
> 
> **You**  
>   14/04/18, 9:56 PM
> 
> Oh wait, hold on:
> 
> **You**  
>   14/04/18, 9:56 PM
> 
> \m/ Eat my ass \m/
> 
> **You**  
>   14/04/18, 9:57 PM
> 
> Better hope you dont get strangled by a psychic beam while youre out there
> 
> **You**  
>   14/04/18, 9:57 PM
> 
> Maybe these fake ass runes on the side of the stage will awaken something in me
> 
> **Jon**  
>   14/04/18, 9:58 PM
> 
> You're telling me this band didn't do their proper research into the occult? I can't believe you would drag me out to witness the art of poseurs.
> 
> **You**  
>   14/04/18, 9:58 PM
> 
> Oh my god Jon
> 
> **You**  
>   14/04/18, 9:59 PM
> 
> I'm putting you back in my pocket
> 
> **You**  
>   14/04/18, 10:00 PM
> 
> See you in a few hours
> 
> **You**  
>   14/04/18, 10:00 PM
> 
> Smartass
> 
> **Jon**  
>   14/04/18, 10:00 PM
> 
> :-)
> 
> **Jon**  
>   14/04/18, 10:01 PM
> 
> Looking forward to it.

Jon laughs, running back the hair on his head as he watches the roll of friendly antagonism over his phone screen, sits in the last words of his typed-out thoughts. Frets over a final comment that he weighs against his desire not to bother Gerry once the lights have slammed downwards and the flare of yells around him has begun. As he resigns to his final exchange with Gerard, he feels the pull of awareness back into reality: feels the slip of his social comfort as the motivation for a final jab is swept up in his isolation. He submits to the overwhelming social cacophony around him, then: adjusts to being alone in the maelstrom without a social connection for the next few hours. He leans back on the nearest surface, embraces his wallflower destiny -- he hadn't even entertained the idea of dancing as a passing source of amusement. He just closes his eyes, prays no one bothers him as he tries to feel out the energy of his surroundings. The music isn't... _bad_ per se, the throaty rumble of the lead singer holding some vague interest for him, but the energy of the instrumentation makes him feel like he's a hundred years old. He tries to focus on the extreme tempo of it; tries to feel the constant rumble of drums roll into a held note in his mind, accelerated into stillness. It's hard to maintain this illusion with this scream of guitar laid over top, though, and when the lyrics drift into the realm of the occult with wild inaccuracies he embarrasses himself by starting to feel slightly _offended_. When he notices himself wondering what to do with his hands for the third time, he elects to surrender to Gerry's earlier suggestion, holding his hand over the pocket with his crushed pack of cigarettes as he heads towards the door.

* * *

Jon is relieved that no one seems to be enforcing the smoke-free radius at the door, making sure to hover where Gerry couldn't get by without his notice as he lights the first of many excuses not to brave the crowd inside. He leans his head on the cold brick of the wall, careful not to let the door out of his peripherals as he lets himself relax. The cold has settled down enough to be vaguely pleasant, and he tries not to relax so hard his eyes fall closed as he idly picks up the loose chatter around him, passing pedestrians and the occasional stumbling metalhead pulling their way up the stairs to witness his second, fourth, fifth cigarettes. He only vaguely entertains the idea of being concerned it's so easy to keep inhaling them, still letting passing conversations float around and through him.

"I dunno, ask that dude. I don't have one."

Jon realizes belatedly that he is very likely _that dude_ as he feels the shift of shadow across his face, the warping of his personal bubble as some enters it.

"Hey, man." She's a bit taller than him, bending her head down slightly like she's talking to a child, smile lightly dopey with alcohol,

"You got a lighter we can borrow?"

Jon looks past the teased mess of her hair and her lightly smudged face of makeup to pull in the impression of the two figures behind her, watching the exchange from a short distance. One is shorter, hair clearly cut and dyed over a sink as it falls over his face in uneven spikes. He moves restlessly from one foot to the other, hovered over slightly by his slouching friend: taught expression, shaved head and thick earring poking over the edge of his bulky jacket. Jon returns his attention to the girl, all shredded fishnet and stitched-together fabrics over her jacket, and attempts a small wade back into sociability,

"Three smokers out all night and none of you thought to bring a lighter?"

"Hey, man." She frowns, friendliness dropping from her face instantaneously,

"Don't be a fucking dick."

"S-sorry, sorry, I-- I do. Sorry." Jon fumbles, social ball spectacularly dropped as embarrassed guilt crashes over him, rooting around in his pocket before handing her a lighter -- plastic, after his hand rolls over the metal tucked next to it.

"Here," He offers, apologetic eyes as he presses the cheap plastic into her hand,

"Sorry, again."

The look she gives him is incredulous, widly pitched eyebrow and upturned lip as she watches his communication break down,

"Oh, _god_ , it's not the end of the fucking world, is it? Relax, christ." Friendly smile, pitying, and she turns her head to wave her friends over in lieu of walking back.

"C'mere, stop being fucking weird," She chides, though it's boisterous and familiar, and only one half of the pair rolls his eyes as they shuffle over. The girl has already made herself comfortable in the short time it takes them to join, cigarette popping up to her lips in between the flares of social energy she spits at Jon.

"Hey!" She greets, shoving the head of the one with the bad hair when he bumps her shoulder,

"This guy's all weird about me running off we this, gonna sit with him by the wall so he doesn't have to worry, aren't we?" She throws Jon a wink and he moves to protest before he catches the eyes of her two friends: thoroughly unconvinced by her analysis of the situation. He leans back against the wall instead, tries to settle into the energy of her as she mostly ignores him, exchanges loud insults with the other two members of her little group.

"You just come for the opener, too?" She asks after a bit of friendly fire, and Jon notes she's managed to get a bit of ash stuck in her hair since last he'd looked. He offers a shrug, lightly smiling onto the end of his cigarette,

"Well, I certainly didn't come for the _main_ act."

"Yeah, they're _shit_!" She enthuses, earning a pair of comically frustrated looks from the other two iterations of her goth trio.

"Figure I should go back and try and enjoy it in a bit but _god_ the first song is always the _worst_ , like-- they always play these _gruesome_ ass hits like it's gonna shock anyone at this point to hear about vivisection and shit like-- how predictable is it gonna get for anyone that comes to see you guys more than once--"

"They're setting the _tone_ , Dani," Bathroom-sink hair protests, shoves his hands into his pocket in an attempted act of defiance. Bald one lets a roll of smoke fall over his tongue, considers his shorter friend,

"They _are_ kinda shit, though, man, but they're _fun_ , right? That's the appeal."

"If they're _fun_ then they're _good_ otherwise what the fuck is the point--"

"I didn't say I don't like them, but, you know,"

"I know _fuck all_ and you can go lick a fucking t--"

"You here all alone or what?" 'Dani' interrupts over the fighting duo, and Jon is happy to no longer have to focus on the trajectory of their conversation. He shakes his head, opts not to keep inhaling tar for as long as he can hold a conversation,

"No, I've got someone inside, just, ah...needed a bit of a break." The 'break' has been forty seven minutes so far, but he doesn't mention as much.

"Aw, yeah, acoustics are shit in there, too. This venue's run by the biggest fuckin' asshole, doesn't keep it up at _all_ and shit's _always_ falling apart in there, half the speakers are fucking broken I _swear_ \--"

Jon catches sink-haircut sticking his index finger out of his fly over Dani's shoulder as she speaks, vaguely wonders if any of them are actually old enough to be in the venue in the first place,

"I'm...not familiar with the history of the venue, no. Though if you're interested in sharing, I wouldn't mind." Jon tries, hoping to catch some information of actual relevancy as he lightly presses.

"History of it's the guy who owns it lets a bunch of teenagers in all the time and they _still_ overcharge him for coke," She snorts, sucking back nicotine and leaning a bit too far into Jon's personal space for his liking. He _very_ much regrets not attaching another fire hazard to his lips, if only to extend his perceived personal space by a few more inches.

"What do you do, by the way? You a T.A. or something?" Jon's not sure whether to be flattered or insulted that she doesn't jump straight to 'professor'.

"Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute." He answers honestly, and then wonders why on earth he felt the need to answer honestly.

"Oh! That's fucking spooky, you guy's hiring?"

" _No_." He intones it more gravely than intended, though not by much.

"You ever seen a ghost, then? That like a requirement to work there?"

"It.. absolutely is _not_." He thinks that may be sort of a lie given her conception of the supernatural, but he doesn't entertain the need to be any more honest than he has already.

" _We_ saw one a couple times." She says, grins like she's holding out something deeply tempting for Jon to observe. And she is, of course, though not for the reasons she imagines. It piques the interest of the mostly checked-out pair, though, sends the bad dye job bouncing up behind her to interject. The third hovers mildly behind, but clearly attends, shifts his body enough to listen to the shift in conversation.

"Yeah, yeah! Scary guy that would hover by the ravine, right?" He grips her shoulder with the question, striped sleeve and bracelets popping out of the cuff as he does.

"Yeah! Kinda had that heat wave wiggle to him," There is a faint waft of cloves up Jon's nose as she gesticulates in return, cling of tobacco and spice to the sleeves of her jacket.

"Yeah, like, rainy season, real cold, but that guy was always wiggling around like it was thirty-five."

"Yeah, yeah, exactly!" The girl is slapping Jon's arm excitedly, as if it would jog his memory of a moment he did not share, waving ash and smoldering tobacco in the air with her other gesturing hand.

"We would always get freaked but Jenny would pop up and start just _going_ \-- like 'oh, I am _feeling_ this guy, and just, like--"

She pulls her arms down beside her hips, then begins to shuffle her way into a series of jerky, asymmetrical movements that could be classified as dancing if Jon were feeling particularly generous. The one with the badly safety-scizzored hair throws out a boom of laughter at this, throws back his head before waving his arms in an even less convincing imitation of the original object of their mockery. There is a faint impression Jon has of the man, the lightly shared memory floating in the air around them as they tense and relax their muscles at incomprehensible intervals, and even from the small glimpse Jon is sure their moves are _way_ off. He resists the urge to try and correct them.

"She would _yell_ at him, too, like, tell him to come over and show us his moves, we were all like _shitting_ terrified in the back of it but she was fucking _hysterical_ \-- we just let her scream at him 'til we got bored or too drunk to care anymore."

The bald one pitches in, clutches his hand dramatically to his chest as he glowers,

" _I_ cared. You guys kept antagonizing him and freaking out he was a ghost. I kept telling you that dude probably just needed some change 'cause he was living in a fucking ravine. Probably would have just come and asked if you all weren't always _screaming_ at him."

"Yeah? You ever walk over there and offer him a tenner you felt so bad?"

"I wasn't going to go over there _alone_ \--"

"Yeah! Cause you knew he was a fucking ghost!"

"He doesn't have to be a _ghost_ to be dangerous. Not gonna fucking waltz up to a wiggly midnight stranger in the park, supernatural or not."

"You should be glad Jenny was there to save your dumb ass from getting eaten by a ghost," Dani laughs, sucks deep on a cigarette that is unquestionably just burning cotton by this point,

"You ever get a one on one conversation with the midnight wiggler, you're _dead_ , I bet."

"Whatever." The bald one grumbles, shrinks angrily into his coat.

"She's right. If an entire group of you is convinced something is supernatural, best for your sake to leave it alone." Jon's supplemental advice is delayed, unsympathetic to the bald goth licking his wounds as he struggles to keep pace with the conversation. He receives a glare from this goth, an enthusiastic hand on his arm from another: Dani, again.

"You superstitious, then? Wanna talk about god?"

"Not-- particularly?" Jon confesses, head lightly swirling with the extroverted enthusiasm of the group, the gently rolling mental catastrophe of the surrounding inebriated minds. She is quiet for a second, her hand gripping his arm, her body lightly swaying, and then her eyes focus in on his, urgent and wide.

"Did you know that I would die for her?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Jenny.

"There was a fight a few weekends ago, this guy just _came_ at us, never had to deal with something like that before. Usually it's pretty organized, right? There's a reason people are fighting, even if it's a bad one. But this guy-- we didn't know him. And he had a _knife_. That's some real scary shit, right? I think some people know what to do with things like that because they've done it before, know what it's like to have someone come at them like that. I don't. I didn't, anyway. And like-- I've always assumed I was a coward. Scared to test it because you don't really want to _know_ ; who wants to have to confront that, right? But I think I knew, deep down, that I was. So why-- explain to me why I jumped in front of her, like I knew what I was doing. Like I knew what the fuck was going to happen. I didn't. I had no idea, just grabbed his arm and smashed my beer on the side of his head. When he bolted the other way I realized, maybe he was never going to get it that close. Maybe it was just about swirling it around the air so we'd freak out and give him our purses, right? Big guy in the middle of the night, probably figured he had the upper hand."

She breaks eyes for a moment to light another cigarette, misses half the tip and sucks back a lopsided ember before she continues,

"Because it _could_ have been easier, been all cerebral and terrified and regrettable if it was just getting robbed. But I saw which one of us he was heading for and I just-- how did I make that decision? Where in me did it...come from? I really, really never thought I would put myself on the line for someone like that and she thanked me like it was me. Like I'm like that. But you have to understand-- I'm _not_. When does life stop being frivolous? How does it come that I find out all of a sudden I'd die for somebody? I can't even leave my room half the time."

Jon watches the smoking end of her cigarette start to even out as she takes another pull,

"She's not a girl, you know. Not any more, I guess? I don't really know how you're supposed to talk about it but she-- oh, _christ_. I'm not supposed to tell you that."

She looks away from Jon finally, fishing around the inside of her jacket in frustration,

"I don't think I should be finishing this if I'm just rambling off people's personal baggage. You should talk more. Keeps drunk girls from rambling at you."

From her jacket she produces a lipstick-smeared can, half empty and the beer inside almost flat. She hands it deftly to Jon, stains the end of her cigarette the same deep brown,

"You're easy to talk to, you dick. Got those big old eyes. Anyway, you can have the rest of that. We should probably get back inside soon."

Jon considers the beer in his hand, mentally mapping the closest bin before surrendering to the tone of the night and the mood of his surroundings, mumbling a 'thanks' before taking a sip. It's miserably flat, warm, and he thinks he can smell the remnants of deodorant and sweat when he takes a drink, hoping a dead man can't catch a cold.

* * *

Jon descends the stairs before the last song, hedges his bets on his ability to withstand five or so minutes of uninterrupted screaming. When his ears finally earn their reprieve, he makes sure to shove his earplugs back into his pocket _before_ he meets back up with Gerry, hand fiddling them in his pocket as he scans the moving crowd. His eyes finally land on a familiar black-clad figure pushing out, hand pushing hair back out of his face as he finds Jon's wall-pinned form easily. Jon starts when his eyes roll over the dark lines streaked over his face, voice and body popping forward in tandem.

"Gerry! God, are you--"

"That was fucking _great_ ," Gerry rumbles over him, oblivious to Jon's terror as he lifts his arms, catches himself before he makes contact. He opts to push his hair back with enhanced fervor, wild grin interrupted with a soft dribble of red.

"You're, um, bleeding?" Jon offers, trying to keep pace with Gerry's mood and failing spectacularly,

"Quite, ah-- quite profusely?"

"My head's got blood in it, then, huh?" Gerry points at the slow trickle falling from his nose, smile still stretched wide as he announces the discovery. Jon's expression continues to betray his horror.

"That's a good thing, Jon." Gerry expands, opts for a drop into mock-seriousness,

"I'm more human than I realized. Not _all_ psychic pillow stuffing in me."

Jon watches as he runs an arm under his nose, streaks the thrilling liquid in a sharp line across his face.

"So, you...had a nice time?" Jon ventures, still taking in the swell of enthusiasm bubbling out from behind Gerard's compromised face.

"Oh, yeah. I got the _shit_ kicked out of me." There's a small nod that accompanies this, still transparently thrilled.

"I'm glad to hear it, then." Jon smiles, and he is: soft blooming of [thrill] in his chest as he eyes the naked joy of Gerard's face, watches the roll of pleasure over someone usually tight with the rehearsed normalcy of stress.

"Do you...want to get out of here?" He ventures, then, watching the thrall of people still pushing their way past Gerard, up the stairs and out the door.

"Yeah," Comes lightly, Gerry running a hand along Jon's shoulders as he turns him, that steadying hand on his back as they make their way upstairs that Jon finds equally confusing and comforting.

When they're out, Gerry opts for a return to his blind navigation of the sidewalk, turned again to face Jon as his heels roll backwards along the street. Jon has to admit it's charming: the excitation and occasional stumble as he prioritizes conversations held face to face. And when street lights pass overhead, he revels slightly in the warm glow folding over Gerard's skin, the periodic illumination of his thrilled and bloodied face. There's some silent captivation in it, the study of his decorated features in small and fleeting pockets, cameo of the brightness of Gerry's stubborn smile.

"You get lucky while I was in there, by the way?" Gerard pitches between exchanges, face strained into something unfamiliar when Jon catches it in another passing light. When Jon crinkles an eyebrow, shoved into a confused silence, Gerry clarifies, tapping a finger on his own lip for emphasis,

"That's a nice colour on you, is all."

It takes Jon a moment, then a startled rub of mouth onto the back of his hand, rolling his palm away under the moonlight to study the faint smudge of brown.

"Ah! N-no, that was the... _very_ charitable donation of a half-empty beer by a gi-- a _young woman_ outside. Thought I should try and...lean into the chaos of the event a little?" Jon tries, grin reliably lopsided, like it's asking permission to exist. Jon catches the return of Gerry's teeth, happily bared as he sends a sweat-soaked band of hair back behind one ear.

"You had fun, then, I hope?" Nervous little fret of eyebrows, stud swinging up in time with his worry.

"It was...certainly interesting," Jon concedes, grin giving away the extent of his enjoyment: if not with the event, then with his present company.

"You had fun." Gerard smirks, shoves Jon's arm when he catches the lingering upturn of Jon's lips. Jon lets out a stilted laugh as he lets himself stumble, pulls his eyes over his glasses and under his grease-streaked hair in a manner that Gerard wants to categorize as _obscene_.

"I'll admit it was an interesting break from desk work and doomsday negation, although clearly not one I was enjoying in the conventional sense."

"I got the word _enjoying_ out of you, I'm counting it."

Jon gives him broken eye contact and a reluctant curl of his mouth to one side as a response, then a rolling of Jon's eyes back over his face, scattered Beholding of his backlit details.

"...Is that _new_ , by the way?" Jon taps the corner of one eyebrow for emphasis, watches the bounce of light off of the metal that lights up Gerry's face.

"You noticed that, huh? Yeah," Gerry clicks his tongue, stretches his irises skyward as if he could take a look at his own brow bone,

"Figured I'm some demonic pain sink, might as well have it be for something I actually _want_ , right?"

"I suppose I can appreciate the logic in that." Jon concedes, still watching the bouncing splash of light on the metal ball,

"If it's enough of a meal for the Eye, should I expect you to walk into the archives with your face _completely_ obscured by metal at some point?"

"What?" Gerry gives him a pout, mock-offended with a hand dramatically at his chest,

"You wouldn't support my fashionable leap into the arms of the Beholding? Could be company uniform."

"I think your aesthetic sensibilities are...fine the way they are." Jon returns, watches Gerry's elbow fly into a street post as he moves to gesticulates in return.

" _Ow_."

Jon snorts, catches up the requisite two places with Gerard as he stops to stare at his elbow like it's somehow betrayed him.

"That bad?" Jon smiles, gentle, presses a soft of fingers under Gerry's leather-clung elbow. Gerry swallows, too thick, then yelps when he feels a bony finger jab into his funny bone. Jon does not gift him with the dignity of swallowing his laugh.

" _Fuck_ \-- god, are you someone's little _brother_ or something?" He frowns, feels the hand still resting under his sleeve as Jon laughs into the other.

"You're such a fan of getting knocked around tonight, I thought I'd try and add to the experience." He tries, still smiling up behind bone and sinew, wrapping curl of knuckle.

"Not all _that_ bad at getting handsy when you wanna poke somebody's bruise, huh?" Gerry asks it with a lean into Jon's personal space, enjoying the few inches he has over Jon. He feels the shocked release of fingertips from jacket fabric, _almost_ regrets his decision to up the ante,

"What's up with all the contact weirdness, then, if you're gonna paw at my poor, defenseless arm like that?"

He revels in the angry flush, the mouth popped open in response before he cuts back over it, shows his hand as he fumbles on his intimidating lean,

"I don't actually have a lot of ways to express things to people without throwing myself on them, you know."

" _You_ said it wasn't weird."

"Yeah, and you said it was. Got some baggage I should be worried about?"

"It's not _baggage_ \--" Jon spits, arms crossing quickly over his chest in defense,

"There are a lot of unpleasant physical feelings in the world. Most kinds of casual embrace tend to...fall under that heading. There's some inherent absurdity to just...Slotting bodies together arbitrarily."

"It's not _arbitrary_ ," Gerry counters, keeping pace with a lightly agitated Jon as they resume their walk,

"Folks slot together pretty naturally, you know. And the absurdity is _supposed_ to be part of the enjoyment, I think."

Jon moves to rebuff him, doesn't get the chance,

"I'm not _actually_ upset about it, by the way." And Gerry's voice _does_ soften, floats, gentle, through the wind into Jon's hair,

"Just...developed a pretty short list of ways to let people know they're important to me in case anything happens to them. Leaning into the terror of exposing something to people in case something awful happens-- there's easy ways to deal with saying so, is all."

And he does catch a stutter in Jon's step before his eyes spin away, lock onto the limited stimuli of the passing street as he avoids the prying Beholding of Jon's eye contact.

"Y-yes, of course, that makes sense." Is stuttered into the breeze, softly falling back into silence,

"Sorry, you're...so intent on physical contact because you're worried about me _dying_?"

"Christ, Jon, when you put it like _/that/_ \--" Gerry swallows, flustered tug on a heavy hoop of metal in his left ear.

"Just got kind of a limited interpersonal arsenal, if I'm being honest. Might have to confront the horror of actually _expressing_ to people that I like having them around."

Jon smirks, "Oh, god, wouldn't want to have to deal with _that_ ," and the tone is grave in a way that _barely_ sounds like a joke,

"If I've got warning, by the way, and if you're not _crushing_ my rib cage with it or half-assing around my waist, I can see the appeal of it, I suppose. A bit of shoulder-centric pressure can be...pleasant."

Gerry snorts, almost loses himself in a choking laugh at Jon's adherence to decorum,

"I'll keep that in mind, then. And I'm not _so intent_ on physical contact, by the way-- I'm not sure a hug and a half is _actually_ enough to typecast me so severely."

"That's good to hear," Jon laughs, feels it whipped quickly away in the breeze,

"I went home from a staff party four hours early, once-- back when I was still just a researcher -- an absolutely _plastered_ Tim hugged one of our coworkers for so long I immediately went outside and called a lift home when I saw it happen next to me."

He laughs, that real, almost-belly reaching one Gerry revels in, feeling the touch of Jon's history against his spirit: the slingshot joy from misery in the hysterical memory of the deceased. He knows not to press, just absorb; the pinprick legacy of Tim, revealed in small whispers from the slowly untangling bramble of Jon. Then, a change in posture beside him, sudden and electric as Jon stops in his tracks, eyes forward with an intensity Gerry registers from his pose alone,

"Jon--"

"Oh, _christ_." Is all Gerry hears before Jon takes off, legs rocketing forward drastically enough to shock him as he watches. It's an entirely new energy compared with the last time he'd seen Jon run: a surprising fervor and desperation suddenly jumped into his skin as he runs, full tilt, towards the institute. Gerry starts behind him, follows his momentum before he looks, understands the source of the Archivists desperate panic. When Gerry looks up, holds their target in the centre of his focus, he feels the familiar descent of dread onto his shoulders: a heavy blanket of duty. Through the domes of his eyes he sees it: the warped burbling that surrounds the institute, the furious whipping of wind and rain that distorts its image, refracts it through a crashing dance of water. As his legs keep pace with Jon he looks upwards, sees the rolling boil of the sky, the expanse of clouds that peel into the distance, nauseating as they stretch farther than the sky should allow, expand until his mind cries, struggling to reach its limits. He carries himself after Jon, without plan or communication as he watches Jon's binding to his duty, the inevitability of his obligations.

"Do we have a plan here, Jon?" Gerard yells over the screaming howl of wind, catching up to Jon as he continues to launch himself through the streets. Jon has less energy at his disposal, struggling lungs and legs already hot with exhausted anger. He huffs once, twice, eyes fixed on the institute as he spits,

"We'll figure that out when we get there."

"And that's gonna help us how, exactly? You can't pretend they'd be coming for anything but _you_."

"Yes, well. It's clearly already _in_ there with my staff. I'm not formulating a plan based on nothing while they're in there." Jon is starting to wheeze as he says it, eyes sporting across the disorienting rumble of clouds converging over the institute before he continues,

"I need _information_ before I can proceed, Gerry."

"You _need_ to try and get it before you're in there, then." Gerry spits, though the tips of his fingers press onto the meat of Jon's back again, steadying Jon as his stamina begins to buckle despite the adrenaline. Jon just heaves a series of sighs, eyes still locked on the curdled sky.

"I can't get _anything_ Gerry, it-- it's too _much_." A confession, quick whip of desperation flung into the swirling air around them.

"At least tell me we're not bursting through the front door, then."

Another huff, an angry, shaking breath,

"We're taking the back door of the archives. Windows are all barred. There's very little option for a surprise entrance here, Gerry, I _promise_."

Gerry concedes enough to add nothing else, just grips the back of Jon's shirt as they approach, two sets of eyes pulling in information like hungry mouths tearing into meat. There is nothing for either of them, though, as Jon's gait refuses to regulate on their approach, only the empty infinity of an angry sky.

Jon braces himself on the brick wall the moment they reach the institute, pulls and releases of breath still shaking and angry. Gerard's hand still braces him through the skin of his coat, releasing as he feels his posture even out.

"See anything?" Gerry ventures, leaning on the side of the door opposite Jon, watching him catch his breath. Jon stutters as he struggles to answer, eyes shooting up with that far-off intensity, scanning information a million miles away.

"I-- I can't, still, i-it's far too _big_ , there's no--" Jon's irises start to shift, impossible and intricate, and Gerry reaches over to touch his elbow, snap them both out of it:

"It's alright, Jon, just-- focus."

"I can't even see my _staff_ in there, I--" His voice hitches for a moment, hopelessly lost in the comedown until he suddenly isn't: muscles shifting in their tension, lifting himself off the wall as the remnants of his exhaust finally leave him.

He squares himself with the door quickly,

And knocks.

Gerard holds his tongue, holds his protest under the thumb of trust, and watches: The sickly peel of yellow over the door's surface, the rumble and pucker of wood, the nauseating swirl of impossible hums and ridges that bend into each other, curl in on themselves before the door is made anew, opened with a throbbing lattice of fingers.

"Hello, Helen."

"Hello again, Jon. You're missing an awful lot of _excitement_ in here, you know."

"I had...gotten that sense, yes."

"And what were you hoping _I_ could do about it?" She asks it with a smile, teeth curling over each other as she does, rising up through wrinkles and falling back in.

"My-- everyone in the institute, are they-- is anyone _hurt_?"

"Hurt?" She puts a curling digit up to the corner of her mouth, mock thoughtfulness as she pretends to wrack her brain,

"No, none of your staff is _hurt_ , Jon."

She laughs at the pull of his expression, then, hand twitching beside her mouth as she savours it,

"Don't make such a dramatic face, Jon. They're not _dead_ , either. Don't worry."

And then she blinks over to Gerard, throws him a pleasantly impossible smile,

"Hello, Gerry."

"Hey, Helen." He nods, keeps Jon in the corner of one eye.

"Are they _inside_ , Helen?" Jon presses, rumble of impatience rolling up over the back of his tongue. Her smile remains, rolling behind broken knuckles.

" _That_ is a _very_ fun question, Jon. They aren't anywhere else _besides_ the institute, but they certainly aren't _in_ it."

"The Vast--"

"No, no," Helen laughs, that crashing, hypnotic spiral of excitation,

"Don't be so _straightforward_ , Jon. Nothing connects so much in a _line_ like that, does it? Your new _boss_ has them, him and his little assistant."

Only breaths leave Jon for a moment, mouth tracing silently over the forms of the Lonely and Peter Lukas, pressing Martin under their influence, over the bodies of Daisy, Melanie and Basira.

" _What_ is the lonely planning to do with them a-- and _why_ \--"

A climb in pitch, crescendo of itching, crashing laughs as Helen hears Jon struggle, try to piece together the small whips of information,

"Oh, I'm sure I don't know, Jon. What on earth do I have to do with the _lonely_?"

Jon sighs, rolls his knuckles into a fist beside his leg as he surrenders, lets the information pass over him, and away,

"Haunted e-mail chain? I-- I have no idea." It's a prickle over his taste buds, the unfamiliar feeling of trying to insert some humanity into their repore,

"Can you tell me what's _in there_ , at least?"

"Hm. She's small. _Very_ angry. You're free to use my hallways, if you like."

Jon says a reluctant 'thank you' with nothing behind it, feels the light tough of Gerry's hand once again on his back as the enter. His other hand is gripped deep in his pocket, thumbing over its contents without a shred of optimism: lighter, cigarettes, crumpled receipts, and the world's smallest pocket knife. He opens and closes it a few times just to make himself feel better, finds the tactic completely ineffective as the walls curl and undulate around them.

* * *

"We have a plan yet, Jon?" Gerry asks, leaned over Jon's shoulder as if the halls are eavesdropping. Jon keeps his eyes on the shaking wrinkle in space that is Helen's warbling gait before him as they walk, does not turn to respond.

"We're going to ask it what it wants."

"Excuse me?"

"We're going to ask it what it wants." Jon repeats, eyes still fixed straight ahead.

"We have the supernatural element if surprise on this girl ripping apart the entire building, and you want to expose yourself for a friendly conversation with her?"

"I doubt it will be particularly friendly."

"What on _earth_ makes you think this is a good idea?"

"I didn't say it was. I said it's what I'm planning to do." Jon spits back, finally turning just enough to meet Gerard's eye. Gerry is incredulous, then breathing steadily in for an attempt at calm: loosening the distressing grip of the hallways and Jon's plan on his mind.

"Your plan if it backfires? You _have_ to assume she's here to kill you, Jon."

"I'm sure she probably is." Jon agrees, and Helen spins at the edge of his sentence, a disgusting corkscrew of muscle and bone as she turns address them:

"I think I'll be sitting this one out, if you don't mind." And her tone makes it clear there's no _real_ 'if', should either of them actually mind,

"She's got a habit of blowing holes into walls I'm not sure suits my needs much. Plus, Jon, I'm sure you know: Sometimes it's just fun to _watch_."

The laugh that rises around them is wet and hollow, crackling up from the floor beneath them as her walls follow them, peeling up and away as Jon and Gerard are left in the rattling hallways of the institute.

The door that takes the place of Helen's is open, and through it there's the interrupted view of the interior room, warped by the rapid spinning of detritus and dust. Gerry lays a hand on Jon's arm, tries to lead him behind the cover of the door in silence. Jon is already caught, though: in the whipping spire of air and anger, the impossible reach of the moving Vast.

Its source is, as Helen had promised, quite small. Jon takes her in as he starts a slow comedown from the impact of the Vast, motivated by the silent prodding of Gerry, urgent and frustrated. As his kind climbs down and returns to his body, he pulls in the details of her: outdated marks of youth, bead bracelets and necklaces that float in orbit of her neck, bright blue box dyed-hair and pen-vandalized sneakers, all sat on the petit frame of the alleged monster. There is a deep understanding, then, Jon gasping with the jolt of insight before Gerry can hope to intervene:

"Monica Palmer." It's half-gasp half-greeting, and her head spins a graceful curve as she turns, slides a gentle smile onto her glitter-slapped face.

"Hello."

The next part of their interaction is significantly harder for him to follow.

* * *

The wall blown out behind him, the ringing in Jon's ears mends itself quickly, then the shaking buzz of his sight as he shoves his glasses right on his face, struggles to push himself off the ground. The air is spinning with dust and crushed brickwork, and behind him he cam hear Gerry cough, muffled by the fabric of his shirt pulled up over his face.

"That's _so_ funny," Monica enthuses, and cheap plastic beads clack over one another as she raises her hand to her mouth. She watches Jon's struggle to regain his footing in the roar of wind, watches his worried friend from the corner of her eye, through a clump of cheap mascara,

"Is that like, 'you wouldn't hit an Archivist with glasses'? Because I think that is _so_ cute--" And she lets out another laugh, blows a hole in the wall right above Jon's rising head. Gerry watches for structural damage, traces the care with which she rattles the walls of their confines.

"I wanted to know--" Jon coughs when a bit of plaster hits his tongue, feels it congealing on the corners of his mouth,

"I wanted to know what we can do to help,"

And when he swallows for a breath the plaster slides down, joined on each inhale by the whirling dust and carpentry around his head. Monica laughs, less convincing, lets the debris float in a gentle rhythm around them as she thinks.

"I'm not sure you can help me kill you _much_ , unless you've got a way to make it more _fun_ \-- Do you, mister Archivist?"

"J-Jon," He clarifies, as if she cares,

"Do you have business with-- with me _specifically_ , or with the institute?" Gerry watches Jon's struggle to regain footing, to ease himself far enough upwards to properly face his immediate threat. Monica huffs a small laugh, and lets him.

"It's not a _bad_ question if you're trying to stay alive, honestly. Not sure it'll work, but it's a good question! It doesn't make _that_ much if a difference to me, but--"

The air is loud, desperately booming around them as she thinks, and Jon caves before Gerry in the fight not to cover his ears.

"I think it's right to say the whole institute _is_ the problem, but I also know you're _very_ important to it-- to all the _learning_ and all the listening and all the doing _fuck_ all about any of it--"

And the anger is back, knocking Jon and Gerry off balance, gripping walls and beams with the rumbling panic of vertigo.

"Hayley--" Jon manages, nausea starting to threaten the back of his throat as he does. Just another laugh from their tiny assailant in response, desperate and sad.

"You were trying to get help to-- to find her again, right?"

"Oh, _duh_ , Archivist. I _knew_ where the fuck she was, though-- no one cared enough to _ask_ , did they?"

"N-no, it sounds like they didn't--" Jon's head is spinning with the weight of the air still, disorienting ferocity of the young girl's fury,

"That was before my time but I'm-- I'm sorry we couldn't help,"

And it's met witn a cackle this time, high and manic, Gerard getting properly knocked off his feet as Jon finally starts to retch, hands still gripping the beam for support,

"Sorry?" She yells, and the laughter is genuine, hysterical,

"That's nice-- did you think I'm not going to kill you over that?"

"I don't care if you kill me," Jon tells her, head leaning onto the wall for an attempt at respite,

"I just-- don't want you having to leave here with any unfinished business--"

And Jon's eyes flash open, then, line up the mechanisms of his body and mind with a flash of insight, a jolt of truth that aligns every part tethered to his core as he stares her down,

"You were the one that killed her."

"I--

" _ **Freed her**_."

Her voice hits the walls with a crack, a rumbling note that starts to threaten its integrity in a very real way. This finally breaks Gerard, sends his voice ripping angrily from his mouth from his position on the floor,

" _Jon_! Do you seriously want to _die_ that fucking badly?" He yells, angrily grasping the wall in vain,

"What the fuck is blurting this shit going to help? If you want to get killed so badly don't fucking drag _me_ along for it--"

The return of the same laugh, though no calm with it, Monica delighting in the discordant struggle of the two employees clinging to the surrounding architecture,

"O~kay! If you want to die so bad, Archivist, maybe I've got the wrong approach! Maybe it's just destruction of something you love, right? It should be equal anyway, right? It's good to have balance! And I'm so~o sorry I'm not sure how attached he is to _you_ yet, so let's try something a little more _connected_ , you think?"

And she laughs, delighted giggle on the outskirts of mania, and Gerry's eyes barely have time to register the transition: knowledge-packed bookshelf suddenly puckered in on itself, pulled into submission by a tunnel of wind. There is a fresh splash of vomit on the floor as Jon falls to his knees, the entire shelf a shredded tapestry of parchment and splinters. He struggles to focus, to right himself in his position on the ground as Gerry steels himself, doesn't emote outside the acceptable overwhelm of an archive employee.

"Jesus." Is Gerry's affected evaluation of Jon, lightly disgusted as he turns back to Monica,

"Gonna destroy anything you could learn about the buried doing that, you know." It's on the edge of gloating as Gerry eyes her up and down, internal scramble for the upper hand as he finally starts to pull himself up,

" _Could_ steal some of this if you _actually_ wanted to know how to help your friend."

"Oh? You didn't hear? I've _killed_ her apparently~"

"Yeah." Gerry returns, almost upright on the lightly shaking wall. He watches Jon struggle for only a moment, eyes fixing back on the girl before him.

"I'm not that invested in your personal vendetta with him, but if I'm listening well enough, you _could_ benefit from not destroying information on your biggest enemy. Eye's got a long way to go between you and the Buried. Death isn't as final as I'm sure you're worried about with these sorts of things."

"If you're so attached to books," She mocks, hands erratic as she speaks with increasing excitation,

"I don't mind doing a bit more of _this_ , honestly."

And Jon's breaths come out short and clipped, then a strained wheeze, hand grasping at his throat in his position still on the floor.

"I'm in no hurry!" She reassures, the Vast expanse of time a promise deep within her bones.

"Jon--" Gerry urges, now lightly pleading as he's forced to watch his Archivist struggle,

"I need something to fucking _work with_ here, I can't just watch you--"

"No, this is--" A gasp interrupts Jon's attempt at a reply, the locking of his throat as he struggles to speak,

"I-if my mind, if  _I_ can see this isn't real, my body's not--"

A dry, thick swallow, a shaking breath he struggles to pull inward,

"If I can see the reality of it, it's not going to _hurt_ \-- it can't be real enough to."

Jon catches his breath, tempered gasps and the twitching struggle of tongue behind teeth. His eyes shift wildly beneath his eyelids, under his deeply furrowed brows as his mind struggles to see.

"Oh, ve~ery impressive, Mr. Archivist! You could have sat there faking it, you know."

The final gasp Gerry hears the Archivist take is drowned out by the booming pressure of wind that pulls Jon backwards, sucking the archive wall in with him.

"Moron."

" _ **Jon!**_ " It's a roar, wet with worry, as Gerard feels his hair slap the sides of his face in the angry vacuum of the hallway.

"Now he'll have to fe~el the distance, how it feels to be so far from what's important to you, right? It's a _gift_ , you know! You should be happy for him. It wouldn't be fun for him to watch this, I don't think!"

"You little asshole," Gerry growls, and his mind fills with connections formed from synapse fires, the web of setting and motivation and tool, as he grips the knife in his pocket, stutters on a step before walking forward. The look he receives is amused, sewn through with light pity, and there's a giggle on the air, soft and sweet, before he drops.

He's pinned, cold crush of air running through his body, kneading the skin of his back, wicked spin of cruelty knit into his hair. He braces himself on the floor, and he sees, and he feels: The lush swirl of air in the pores of his body, the failing pressure on a pair of lungs that do not exist.

He tenses the mockery of musculature, pantomimes a struggling body of flesh and bone under the onslaught of accelerated natures. It's not hard to fake the sounds-- the gasping choke of breathlessness, because no air can actually get _in_ \-- but none needs to, and he stutters forward with the unconvincing mettle of a doomed man.

"Perhaps he won't actually be that attached, I am so~o sorry I didn't get to learn about who might be the most painful to lose, but you _did_ seem pretty friendly! I'll just hope I'm lucky, I guess! Maybe then you'll know how much it hurts, right?"

And Gerard looks blearily upward, watches the soft glitter of light on the tears that hover around her, the gentle stream picked up by the wind. He tries not to think about what they mean as he crawls, mimes the appropriate motions of a man being pinned to the ground by an inconceivable weight. It starts to get a bit lighter, then: the feeling of reality in his brain as air fails to reach it, starts to cloud it with a pleasant terror as he focuses on the tremble of his arms.

"Because you know, right? To be so close and to have to see it-- it's really, it's really _not_ what I like to do, you understand? Because to _feel_ far away and to _be_ far away-- those are alike! But to hear the person you care about scream, to--to hear how _afraid_ they are and you're so, so close but you can't _do_ anything-- you know that's not the kind of pain I would ever _like_ to inflict, don't you."

She shakes her head now, tries not to lose focus when the pain hits her heart-- always a tight, _smothering_ pain.

Suffocating.

"There's _nothing_ like that kind of pain. It's the most painful thing in the world."

A soft giggle, wet behind the vortex of tears that encircles her head,

"And you'll be dead, but maybe your Archivist friend can learn to relate! Because we all understand what it is to feel distant from those we care about, can't we? Maybe he'll fly out there for a few millennia and think, 'ah So this is how she felt-- It's not so alien! Just human.' Not like--"

The scream that hits the walls is piercing as she drops to the floor. The wind stops, dropping the shredded debris of the archive with it, and Gerard feels the gentle beads of water circling his neck as he breathes.

Monica is swearing wildly, struggling and failing to stand on the one Achilles tendon not recently shredded, and Gerard focuses his breathing as his eyes struggle to pull data from behind the dark distortion of an unoxygenated brain.

In theory, it is quick, easy.

In practice, though, he is tearing through the throat of a scared girl, ripping through viscera that erupts over the sweet, smiling face of a cartoon rabbit around her neck. Gerard does not believe in a quick, painless death; he knows the eternity of sensation that terror and pain creates.

When it's finished, he rests the knife beside her on the floor, pulling air in as gently as he can handle. Reaching up, he pulls the monster's eyelids gently down over her eyes, bringing his hand back with a soft layer of glitter and mascara.

And then, when he is sure he can finally stand, he does so, taking a last cursory glance around the hallway before heading into the vacuous hole in its belly.


	6. vi. Shən

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's some light sex talk in this chapter, and a bit of Jon self-loathing over being ace. Both are fairly brief but still deserve a warning I think. Stay safe out there fellas 🤘

When Gerard finally reaches the Archivist, he is leaning on a pile of debris, slumped into unconsciousness. He lets his worry carry him into a run to the Archivist's side, light shake and yell of his name to assuage the worst of the possible realities. The twist of anxiety spun into the hair of him relaxes as Jon wearily shifts, blinks open heavy eyelids and takes in his new guest in the stomach of the Vast.

"...Hello?" Jon manages, disorientation thick over his eyes.

"Yes, hello, Jon. A bit tired, are we?"

Jon's mouth opens, closes as he furrows his brow, nodding his head in response.

"Alright, well. Not gonna fix much of that lying down. Hop on."

Jon's eyes run over Gerard's back blearily, struggling to register the offer. Gerard dips his shoulders lower, throws an expectant look over one at the disoriented Archivist. When he is forced to give up and pull Jon's arm over his shoulders, there is no resistance from the Archivist, and soon he is resting on Gerry's back, legs tucked in the grip of his arms.

"I didn't bring anything to eat, so I'm sorry about that." Gerard apologizes, shifting softly under Jon as he re-traces his steps through the Vast. Jon's response is mumbled, incomprehensible into the thick of Gerry's hair.

"...Jon?"

Jon manages to pull up his head at the direct address, limp curiosity pulling out of his throat in response.

"You get a chance to read anything before this hit?"

It's a dry, struggling 'no' that meets Gerard's ears in return.

"Right. Well, we've got a few hours 'til we're back in the archives."

Gerard clears his throat, then, speaking into the foggy expanse rolling out ahead of him.

"It was summertime. It was always summertime, it felt like: so hot and dry and barren in that house. You know that feeling? Like the sun's something oppressive, antagonistic, but not enough life to be company. I had honestly just been lying on the floor trying to enjoy the fact that my mother wasn't around, but it was so hot I just...couldn't. Like it was a competition between me and the heat for a while, right? No, my mum's gone and I _will_ relax. Real defiant laziness, lying on the carpet in my room instead of going downstairs and sticking my head in the fridge for a couple minutes.

I'm just laying there for a while, stubbornly trying to _force_ relaxation so I don't have to walk downstairs and then something sort-of...shifts. Something about this theoretical fight with the heat starts to feel a little bit too _real_ in a way I couldn't quite explain. All I know is I suddenly became very aware of just how hot it was and that I was alone in it, just under this hot blanket of air in my room and-- and just, you know how sometimes you can just feel how _vulnerable_ a human body is? When you get real cognizant of your limits, of how easy it is for your skin to be dug into and your organs to rupture and your body to just succumb to the oppressive weight of everything around you? Yeah. It was like that. Like I was real conscious I was just...alone, a human body with the sun in this empty apartment. And I got... _scared_. Finally try and get up and it's _hard_ , hot weight all over me and I feel so _weak_ and _small_ \-- real scary sort of vulnerability, the sort I really only felt around mom -- so I get myself to the stairs and they're so hard to walk on, not twisting in the proper ways and too long then too short, it feels like an eternity getting down them and then -- when I finally _get_ to the fridge, I can't -- nothing makes _sense_ , it's like my hand can't even sort the temperatures in there, eyes can't take in the information on anything in front of me and then, it finally fucking hits me. This is one of them. I didn't _really_ know them yet, not all categorized by name the way I do after so many years, but I _knew_ this wasn't fucking heat stroke -- this was something coming in my house to _torment_ me. So I try and centre myself, you know? Focus on something I was sure of, and -- god, this is still embarrassing, actually, but -- I had _just_ met Ben back then and I was so...over-invested in him already, and that was sort of the only thing that was _clear_ right then, just-- clinging to this small memory from the day before, this small moment of connection with another human being. Then when I had that I just had to wait. Hold myself still with the thought and not freak out about my brain baking. And it worked, you know? That was the first time I really got to feel firsthand how these powers run through you and over you, how it feels to hold yourself up against the tide of something evil. But after a while you sort of realize you're just standing in your kitchen like normal again, shaking with nerves and soaked in terror-sweat and your mum is watching you tear up in terror with this fucking detached bemusement because lord knows when she got home during all of this. I think I was so mad I actually lit into her for that one. One of the last times I really had the energy to fight her head on like that. 

Taught me something about what tethers us, though. It's almost funny looking back on it, honestly. Ben and I started dating because this trauma-riddled kid charged him after work and told him about this whole event like he was the second coming of Christ. Said there had to be a reason for it, like I couldn't just be a lonely kid who needed kindness so much a taste of it saved my life. Like it meant something that he was able to pull me out like that."

Gerry laughs to himself, dry and humourless, feeling the circle of the Archivist's arms as his mind begins to pull back out from its history.

"Guess he agreed with me, though, huh? Probably could have just asked him out without all the backstory, frankly. I think he already liked me without an appeal to the concept of romantic destiny. Had enough of a taste of it all he knew how important human connections were, too, I think."

Jon speaks his first focused words, finally, exhales a hot breath on the back of Gerry's neck that makes him shiver,

"Thought there were no powers of love and connection to be saving us all from doom. Has the benevolent spirit of sentimentality possessed you so suddenly?" 

"A thing doesn't have to be forcibly manifesting itself in human avatars to exist, you absolute shithead. Welcome back, by the way. Feeling better?" 

"Significantly." Jon assures, voice flat and clear behind Gerry's ear. Then, 

"...Thank you. I can walk, now, if you need me to." 

A pause on Gerard, conspicuously long by his estimation and unnoticeable by Jon's, 

"Don't feel the need to. My body's not human, anyway. Not like I get tired anymore." 

Jon's face wrinkles, quick manifestation of protest as Gerry leans towards inhumanity.  

"Don't say that. You're as human as I am." 

Gerry laughs, echo of it sucked out into the endless fog that surrounds them.  

"Generous position to take. A little bit of spooky brain activity isn't really a match for--" 

And his step stutters, stopping him for a moment before he regains himself, re-evaluates the weight of Jon along his spine, the _feel_ of him anew. When he speaks again, the Vast steals his whisper almost in its entirety. 

"Jon... 

"Have you...already died?" 

There is a small pressure he feels, the hug around his neck as Jon instinctively curls. 

"Yes." 

"...Tell me about it." 

There is a pause from Jon, but not a protest, and Gerry feels the dull shift under his chin as Jon's hand nervously rubs his arm. 

"It was after we met the first time. The unknowing-- it didn't kill me, but our method of stopping it did." 

He takes a deep breath, exhales it darkly. Gerry feels the shift in the air, the subtle twinge of anger. 

"I'm sorry, but that's not the information you want, is it? That isn't-- the _condition_ of the exchange." 

"What?" 

Gerry does not have time to protest, feeling only the hot rumble of breath as Jon's pain unhinges: 

👁 

"Hot. Hot and sharp. Incomprehensible. Can't think can't remember but must. Untangle. Untangling." 

You feel cold, afraid. It stops you from speaking, protesting. You begin to want to know as well. You begin to know that you _want_ to know. Your legs move for you. 

"Doesn't start at the chest, at the centre. Becoming aware of skin, what makes it up, flesh and machine. Wrong, wrong, _deeply_ wrong. Agony is a small word. Cruelty. Punishment. Impossible to understand yet mandatory to feel. I'll start at the beginning, as best I can: 

Muscle feels hot when it is punctured. Warm but wrong. Like that, sizzling, like meat, submerged in hot oil, unnatural bubbling of skin, feeling it peel off, scream upwards and out-- is this clear enough?" 

Your mouth speaks, though you do not want it to. 

"Yes." 

"Alright. Then down through my arm. A different fear than not knowing. The blinding white terror of certainty. Pain fills out the whole room, you feel your body start to expand, become disentangled from itself, become the space between itself. I am where I am and I am suspended from the ceiling and I am the hot, sticky air around me, but because I am destined to be a demon, I suppose I am whole. If not during, then certainly after. That part is less clear-- I know what the split of the tendons in my foot felt like, but when it goes back together it just feels like undoing. The pain does not communicate meaning when it is undone. It just goes. I am fading for that part, anyway. Mind...plummeting downward into other people's pain, I suppose. Tired of my own." 

You feel your body react, surrogate nervous system lighting up with a physiological sense of empathy. The rumble of bone, the boil of skin: dying in tandem with the host site of the Archivist. 

"Would you like to hear more?" 

"No--" Your lips allow you to say, to refuse despite the lingering touch of _need_. For now, your work is finished. 

Your work is just beginning. 

👁

There is a band of silence stretched between them for a moment, heavy and thick, before Gerard feels the tightening of Jon's arms around his neck. 

"Did that...help?" 

Gerard has no answer, just a clarity of mind and a swirl of energy at his centre that is wholly unfamiliar. A drive and a direction: A purpose. 

"...What was it _supposed_ to help, exactly?" And despite the renewed energy there is strain on his voice, a hoarse whisper that fights to reject its reality. 

"With the...hunger." Jon clarifies, and the arms tighten further, tense and stiff and fearful, 

"Or-- it doesn't have to be a _hunger_ for you, as how you classify it, it-- just, do you feel a bit better? I'm sure it takes a lot out to-- walking for three hours to find me. I-- wanted to thank you." 

"You wanted to _thank_ me..." Gerard breathes, whispered repetition of Jon's thesis. 

"Is this why I've felt so fucking out of it this whole time? When I-- after that demon bowl, I felt so... _sure_ when I was ripping apart the archives, I thought that it was just the _anger_ but it was-- so getting torn apart is supposed to be _good_ for me now?" 

"It doesn't have to _happen_ to you, though! You see?" And what Gerard does is not _see_ but _feel_ Jon's hand tapping the back of his other, enthusiastic rhythm popping up and down under Gerard's throat, 

"It isn't always the same, sometimes not even _near_ , but-- it could help, couldn't it?"  

"Sorry, are you getting _excited_ about this?" Gerry feels the repeated tap of Jon's fingers around his wrist, the sustained tempo that he understands as a manifestation of thrill. It slows when Gerry presses, but does not still, the gentle rhythm still humming against his clavicle and Jon speaks in return: 

"It's not-- this is _good_ , Gerry. If you're still able to be sustained off of _statements_ , this is-- this is a good thing. Nothing has to hurt you for you to be _sustained_." 

There is a pause, stretching on for years between them in the eternity of their surroundings. When Gerry speaks, it is low, into the thick cover of his hair: 

"...So I _do_ still need to eat." 

"Yes, but-- not such, ah, big meals as we'd thought?" That stubborn optimism, rare on Jon and just as frustrating, blown into the nest of hair beside Gerry's ear. Gerry's response is spun darkly into the messy web of black, almost lost in the tangle of his self. 

"Sorry, Jon, are you getting _excited_ that I'm stuck like this? A lotta happy little twitching going on under my chin from somebody so harangued by fears of monstrousness, there." 

"It's not-- _twitching_ ," Jon deflects, hands slowing to a stop over Gerry's throat. He feels the grunt that pulls out of it, braced against the flesh of his thumb. 

"Knew you were excited about some of your spooky tricks when I met you but I'm not sure I share your _enthusiasm_ for the whole experience yet." 

"Oh! That's right, you-- you might have some abilities emerge as well, I-- I hadn't even thought of it." 

" _Jon_ \--" 

"Sorry! I’m sorry, I just--" 

Jon takes a deep breath, lets it out, hot and shaking onto the back of Gerry's neck, 

"It's... _nice_. That you're able to be sustained the same way I am? At least partially, it-- it's nice that it's something _familiar_ \--" 

And Jon lets out another breath, the rumbling curl of finger over knuckle returning under Gerry's chin, knit through with his usual anxious energy. 

"I'm just...happy not to have to do this alone anymore." 

Jon's hands curl tighter around Gerry at the admission, self-conscious grip of his hands onto his arms as he feels the deep bob of Adam's apple against his arm. For a while, there is just the sound of Gerry's boots on the ground: the hollow echo that flies outward with every fall of his feet. Finally, that familiar roll of throat up and down his arm, as Gerry pulls another wet mouthful of ideas down, into a pit of hair. 

"Um. No problem." He offers without any conviction whatsoever. 

"For what it's worth, I'm-- I'm happy I don't have to do this alone, either. Beholding grudges aside I'm, uh—I could have asked for _much_ worse guides through the whole experience of being a reanimated corpse." 

"That's-- relieving to hear," Jon sighs, breathes that now-familiar breath over Gerard's hair once again, 

"I still don't feel particularly _confident_ that I have any idea what I'm supposed to be _doing_ , so-- if I've been any help that's...good to know." 

"Nice to be lost together. Something to be said for having someone to share the confusion with." Gerry muses. 

"Yes I...I suppose it is." Jon wraps one hand over an arm, tighter and warmer over the strip of skin exposed by the collar of Gerry's shirt. Then that nerve-tinged bob of throat up his arm, like clockwork. 

"So...none of your other staff have been, ah, _taken_ the same way, I take it?" 

Jon nods, 

"Not... _exactly_ , anyway. There have been... _brushes_ with powers on almost all of them, but, they've either come out the other side of them or become...unreachable." 

And Gerry feels the shift in the posture on his back, the sad drop of weight as Jon sighs, re-adjusts: 

"Daisy gets it, somewhat. But she's out of it and I'm-- I'm happy for her. It's good for her. 

Gerry doesn't question which one of them Jon is trying to convince,  

"I, ah, actually scared her so badly with my dream-crawling she was planning to kill me for a while." There's something bumping up against the nerves on Jon's voice, almost prideful, that Gerry elects not to poke fun at. He just laughs a small, stolen laugh instead. 

"Sounds like a recipe for a _roaring_ staff party, Jon. You should've asked me how to do office politics when you summoned me from that book instead." 

"She's not planning to any _more_ \--" Jon hits back, and Gerry thinks he can almost _feel_ the pout on the back of his head, 

"I get along better with her than most of the other people in the archives now, actually." 

"Is that a ringing endorsement of your conflict resolution skills, or a _painfully_ grim image you've just painted of the archives under your jurisdiction?" 

Jon's reply is a strange shift of his head, then a hacking cough and sputter as he buries his mouth in his shoulder. 

"...Alright back there?" 

Jon catches his breath in the fabric of his sweater, begrudgingly replies: 

"It would be a lot easier to stick my tongue out at you if you didn't have so much _hair_ , you know." 

"A lot easier to hide it, too. That's my booby trap against Archivists making fun of me behind my back." 

Jon huffs a laugh into Gerard's hair, disrupts it just enough to catch the hint of an eye on the back of Gerry's neck: feel the same tempting pull to run a finger over it, as if needing to prove that it's real. He knows better, and he slides his eyes back to one side of eternity, but he wonders if Gerry would mind; if his enthusiastic physicality extends to the curious hands of a monster. If touch has different rules after death. He swallows the thoughts, opts instead to turn them into a wet weight in the pit of his stomach. Twists his mind into something new, something much easier to regurgitate. 

"That was...not a bad plan back there, by the way. The, ah-- Leaning into the concept that I _wanted_ her to kill me was...I think it scattered her attention a bit." 

A conspicuous beat of silence, the soft fog of a cloudy sky whispered between them despite Jon's chest rolling along the length of Gerry's spine. Then Gerry breathes it in to speak, 

"That...wasn't a plan, Jon. It seemed like you...really wanted to die back there." 

A returning lob of quiet, lightly pinching shame dug into the hair rolling over Gerry's shoulders. He sighs, feels the heavy weight of guilt weighing on his back. 

"Promise I'm not judging the impulse, alright? Just...if you're gonna grapple with it where people can see it, you're...going to have to grapple with the fact that people will be upset about it, too. Death impacts people whether you choose to believe it or not." 

"I was... _trying_ to keep her focused on _me_." 

"I'm sure you were. Noble intentions of self-sacrifice don't always adhere to the most _robust_ logic, though. Easy to find a reason to throw your life away sometimes." 

"I'm...sorry. I should have realized it likely wouldn't actually save you from anything, I just-- it seemed like I'd be what she wanted." 

"I don't think she wanted you _or_ me, Jon. She wanted her dead girlfriend to not be dead, and she wanted people to _hurt_. Jumping in front of a bullet's pointless when someone's got a full magazine." 

"They never...they never quite made it that far," Jon informs him, misty voice and faraway sight spoken into fog and endless grey, 

"But I...I suppose you're right."

Another adjustment of Jon, popping him upwards as their conversation starts to let him slip. 

"Like I said, Jon, I get it. Just understand what you might be leaving people to clean up before you throw yourself onto something, alright?" 

Gerry feels the strand of hair fly up as Jon exhales a laugh, wraps one arm tighter around Gerard's neck as he reaches up the other to adjust his glasses. 

"I _suppose_ I can _try_. I'll admit dying to avoid a talking to about self preservation doesn't seem all that defensible if I can't justify it to save someone." 

"That's the spirit. We're all begrudgingly in this together, huh?" 

"Yes, that...sums it up pretty nicely, unfortunately." Jon says. Then, with a slight hitch if hesitation, runs his hand over a section of Gerry's hair, fingertips gliding lightly over the edge of a neck-bound eye staring back at him. Gerry lets out a noise somewhere between a cough and a _yelp_ the moment Jon's nail hits his neck. 

"Sorry! Sorry, that was supposed to be...reassuring." 

"Sure, Jon. Nothing calms people down like a hand on their neck in the middle of a haunted _void_." 

"Thought it might...follow the flow of topics better than it did, I guess. That, uh, intertwined sorrow of a doomed destiny?" 

"That's," Gerry swallows, thick enough Jon once again feels the bob of Gerry's Adam's apple along his arm, 

"That's _one_ way to put it, sure." 

"...That, and I sort-of wanted to see what your little, ah, neck eyeballs felt like." 

"Hah! So the truth comes out, huh?" Gerry clicks his tongue, turns to add another jab before remembering Jon is still attached to him, shifting Jon suddenly enough to send his arm flying off his neck at entirely the wrong angle, almost toppling them both. Gerry laughs as he stumbles back on course, legs gripped tighter around his waist as they struggle not to wipe out. 

"Don't think you need to flail _quite_ that hard, Jon. Probably a lot faster if we don't eat shit while we're trudging through the Vast." 

"I _offered_ to walk." Jon spits back, dangerously close to catching his tongue on hair again before he stops himself. 

"Maybe it's nice to feel useful. Keeps a nice little sense if purpose broiling under your skin, huh? Easier to stay motivated." 

"Yes, I can...I can understand that." Jon concedes, returning his arm to its twin in the loop around Gerard's neck. Gerard is happy to feel it return, still staring back into the endless roll of night and fog before him. 

"Speaking of-- you're going the wrong way, now." Jon points a finger to Gerry's left, the solid ground and reality of the institute clear over his eyes after their stumble off course. Gerry just nods, keeps that tight grip on Jon's legs as he adjusts his stride. 

"Yes, that's-- that should do it, I think. If we're on the subject of being useful." 

"Yeah, and on the subject of you throwing yourself in harm's way for people you barely know. Don't self deprecate about your usefulness, I'm not feeling responsible for your guilt complex." 

"Hah! Not much use if _other_ people are feeling responsible for it, is there? I think it's supposed to be a prison of my own des...ign..." 

Jon trails his way through the last word, posture locking into sudden tension along Gerry's spine, knees jammed into his side as he feels Jon rocket up, eyes sucking in the Vast with electric intensity. 

"G-- Gerry, there's--" 

And his voice fights to communicate through that misty enchantment, awe and urgency clumsily interlocking, 

"We're going to need to start running— **_Now_ **." 

* * *

The rumble of space splits open the heart of the Vast, breaks the illusion of infinity into a crumbling waste of dust and barrier, shifting under the dying thrulls of its maker. Gerard's boots hit space that does not feel like ground, has to force his mind to _trust_ the existence of solidity under the feeling of cold, empty air. Forcing his body to believe in the rocket forward as his feet float down through fog, Archivist's Sight looped into him as his eyes pull reality from crumbling abyss. Gerard feels the pinprick knowledge running up and down his body, split open eyes pulling reality through him as he carries the Archivist and self towards the closing reality of the institute. When his feet hit the wood of their goal, he is sent to his knees, scuffed denim rubbed into skin as Jon barely catches himself in time; leg bracing the floor on one side of Gerry's back as the failing chasm of air ripples behind them. 

"Little more warning might have been nice, there." Gerry manages. As he feels Jon's wait pull off and away from him he lets himself move, as well: pushing himself lightly back onto his feet and upwards.  

"Nothing was happening until it _was_ , honestly-- there was nothing to tell until it started collapsing in on itself." 

"Fair enough. Good thing I didn't let you walk, huh?" Gerry smiles, light click of his tongue. 

"Any why is _that_?" Jon presses, and it just splits the grin one iota wider. 

"'Cause you're shit at getting anywhere in a hurry, Jon." 

"I'm an _academic_. I'm allowed to be out of shape." 

There's a small laugh from Gerry in response, short-lived as the atmosphere of the hallway falls back over him. Jon's eyes follow the mood, trace Gerry's solemnity to its source on the floor. 

"...Ah." Is his offer, brief conclusion on the life of a teenage girl, 

"That...explains why it started closing in on us, I suppose. Might be hard to sustain without a source." 

Gerry watches the way the blood on the floor shifts-- the way it moves up into the air, evaporating in twirling spires and becoming the air around them as she starts to fade. He can see it on her face, too, the dissipating form of what used to be a person, turning into hot, sickly air in the backs of their throats, and panic starts to hit him. He pushes a hand out, sideways, onto Jon's arm, holds his sleeve with tattooed fingers as he composes his thoughts around the murdered demon. 

Jon misunderstands, not always quick enough with people, rests a hand gently on the arm that circles his, 

"I'm sorry, Gerry. I didn't want for you to have to...resort to this, again." And the sorrow in his voice is appropriate, soft and rumbling as he watches Monica start to fade into the destiny of her element, 

"I was hoping there was a way we could-- avoid this. I know you don't want to be-- t-to feel responsible for this again." 

Gerry sighs, pinched with nerves as he squeezes Jon's arm, _almost_ understanding, digging his eyes into only the parts of Gerry he knows to look for. 

"Jon...I need you to do something for me." 

Jon's eyes flow from the clouded air at their feet to the face of the girl holding Gerry's attention, quickly register the brief spark of history, the agony and terror of her end. He pulls them away quietly, trying not to let his spirit revel as his mind begins to See her fully. 

"Um, yes, Gerry, a-anything you need." 

Gerry's eyes stay on her, the unnatural posture of death that holds her to the floor. He forces out a breath, long and deep, before finally swinging his focus back onto Jon. 

"You can pull a statement, right?" 

And Jon's eyes flash at this, the roll of knowledge over them as Gerard reaches in without knowing, pulls out a thread and washes over Jon with the feeling of being Seen. Jon just nods, hand light in Gerry's arm as he watches Gerry's head inevitably pulled back over to the body. 

"Is it too late to pull one from her? Is there anything even that's going to be... _left_?" Jon watches the agitation run through his arms as Gerry clenches fists and runs over the lining of his coat, frets at the edges of it with angry nerves. Jon moves fingertips gently from coat fabric, walks one step forward; soft footfalls before he bends down beside her, takes in the posture of rest on her too-young face. 

"I'm...honestly not sure." He confesses, hand held lightly in the air over her eyes. Then a turn, head over shoulder as he looks back at Gerard. 

"How would you...like me to give it to you, if I'm able to pull it?" He asks, still watching the transfer of nerves kaleidoscoping over Gerard's face. 

"...Write it, I guess. If you can remember it all." 

Jon just nods, turns back to the task at hand. 

He lifts the eyelid of her right eye, rolls the eyeball into contact with his own, 

And begins. 

Gerard doesn't watch, doesn't want to see the exchange of knowledge and pain, busies himself instead with the bland search for paper and pen in an archive stocked with almost nothing else. When he turns, he spots on the floor by Jon a stubbornly running tape recorder: hears the whirr of recently manifested voyeurism.  With a gentle hand on Jon's shoulder, he wedges his foot on one side of it, and promptly kicks it down the hall. Jon doesn't notice, just lets out a rumbling gasp when the last notes of the young girl's life hit his grey matter, immediately fumbling at Gerry behind him for the paper and pen. Gerry supplies both, watches the frantic energy with which Jon hunches over them on the floor, manic scrawl on interrupted floorboard as he struggles to purge his mind of the information. There is another breath when he's finished, softer than the first, as his posture relaxes and he pushes himself up onto his knees, paper in hand. Gerry catches his eyes as he does, the hot yellow energy of distorted pupil, the searing burn of them on his iris. 

"Here." Jon offers, lifts the statement up from his place on the floor in a way that strikes Gerard as almost pious. He takes the paper gingerly, holds it like a child, soft and vulnerable on his fingertips. His eyes run over the jittering text, crunched together and sprawling out in uneven rhythms over the page, then pull back onto Jon. 

"I'm not...sure if I can read this, Jon." He admits, watches as Jon pushes himself back up onto his feet, kneecaps freshly blood-soaked. His eyes trace the line from Gerard's hands up to his face, take in the soft worry creased into the lines of his face. 

"When you sit down to do so I would be...surprised if you found you couldn't." He offers an attempt at a reassuring smile, hung crooked below bleary eyes. Gerard just nods, folding the statement neatly and tucking it into his pocket. His hand holds it for a moment as he does, reluctant to let go as his mind continues to churn. 

"I never thought of trying this, actually. Feeding from someone who was already dead, it-- if it _works_ that's...somewhat promising." 

"I'm not trying to _feed_ from her, Jon." He spits it, disdainfully. 

"She looks like she's fucking 16. I just...don't think she deserves to go out without us knowing anything about her except that she had to become a monster." 

"Right, o-of course. Sorry." Jon swallows, watching the roll of Gerry's fingers over the through his coat pocket, avoiding eye contact. 

"Is there...any way this _won't_ feed the eye, me reading this? I don't want that to be what she ends up being used for, after all of that." 

Jon opens his mouth, closes it, thumb lifting up to his chin as he considers it. 

"It might move through you regardless, but...avoid reading it aloud and you should be fine, I'd imagine. And, ah--" A fuss of the sleeve of his shirt, tongue held for a moment by the hand of his patron.

"If you'd like to burn it afterward, that would probably be in your best interest. Just-- don't be surprised, if it hurts a little." 

Gerry nods, fingers still taut on the remnants of the dead girl's life. Jon moves around discordantly before him, eyes lighting up with the traces of her spun into wisps of moisture on the air. He hadn't noticed the building density of it, the endless sprawl of the Vast climbing the air towards a new host. 

"We should-- get out of here," Jon realizes, feeling something _uncomfortably_ familiar snaking through his lungs as he inhales the expanding grave. Gerard stops him when he takes a step forward, though: keeps his focus on the lifting face of his victim. 

"Jon...could you close her fucking eye?" 

A whip around of his head, always tracking along lines of information until his mind bears down on it: the lid still lifted, soft circle of brown not yet made history. 

"S-sorry--" He apologizes briskly, bending down to smooth her face into the most peaceful expression he can muster, 

"I'm not-- used to dealing with the aftermath of this part. I didn't realize." 

Gerry just dips his head in a nod, exhausted, not bothering to hide the crep of [sadness] returning to the corners of his face. He becomes the one who leads them out, silent and heavy as Jon fumbles for his phone. He hears the surprise, the clipped words as he reaches Basira and struggles to mix warning and relief into their marred relationship, rocked by their digital barrier further into something Lonely. 

* * *

It's different than the Buried. 

Where there was suffocation before, now there's only space: empty and digging into her skin, bloodless lacerations of cold, lonely air. 

The explanation of the mechanisms of this are miles away now, like they happened in a past life, to someone who was still _alive_ : Now it's just desperate emptiness, the hollow note sustained for all eternity in an empty chest. 

It curls its hands into the memory of Basira, and she isn't surprised, but it's pulling up the depths of her and pulling their strands of connection taut, then snapping. In her mind she knows this connection still remains, endless chords and wires knit within her, and it's more data for the Lonely to expunge: to reach its breath into and corrupt. 

The condition of the Anchoring is to not reach for it until it reaches back, until the promise of safety is brought forward in her psyche, pushed by the hand of one man, or another. She tries to focus on anything besides the corroding of her anchoring connection: the dissipation of past relationships and family, the ache that brings her back to Basira over, and over, and over. But there is something deeply appetizing to a gay woman's psyche, and the Lonely only plunges deeper into Daisy as she feels the limits of her connections: the nature of who she is, has always been. 

When she's pulled back out, hand still connected to her arm by Melanie, she's surprised when Basira gets to him first: leg to the stomach as Martin buckles over, braces himself against the wall. Lukas is smarter, more practiced, and he's gone the second they return, but Martin sputters, tries for a justification. When Daisy's arm makes contact with the wall, though, it's clear he's given up on trying. The three women are alone again, and he resigns to the inevitability of failed understanding: of the pain borne from care, the impossible chasm between intent and effect. 

Once they're out, they cling to one another, their arms and hands knit into each others for hours: a latticed tribute to the terror still broiling in the base of their brains. Sewn into the safe meat of others as they navigate back through the windswept halls, the lonely ache of desperation still clinging to the brickwork. When Jon finally calls, Basira's voice is tight as it cuts through the feeling: shaking like it's the first time she's spoken to another person. And when she answers, she makes sure to put it on speaker, the three of them huddled around her phone, clinging to the un-Touched voice of a man only Lonely in the mundane; woven spirit of another within his singing subtly through him, filling out his voice as it lifts up from the cheap plastic speaker. 

* * *

"They're going to stay out of this hallway until it-- until she fades. I'm not sure what else to do but wait for the effects of the Vast to, ah, hopefully leave the institute without incident." Jon sighs, fiddles mildly with his phone as the call is still draped over his mind. He feels the distance between himself and his staff, pushed at the edges by the influence of the Vast and Lonely, swelled into the cracks of their attempts to meet. Another sigh hits his lip, resignation to a clearer mind as he pockets the phone, looks up to the silent form of Gerry. 

"Are you...planning on reading that now? If you need some privacy there's still-- there are places to go where it should be easy to see a tape recorder manifest, at least." 

Gerry shrugs, still quiet, eyes broken to one side as his hands still roll along the pocketed crease of the girl's psyche. Jon tries to track the path between exhaustion and sadness, watching the heavy droop of Gerry's shoulders with pinprick anxiety at the back of his mind, needling. 

"...That'd be nice, yeah." He finally concedes, returns the gift of meeting eyes under the nervous furrow of Jon's brow. 

* * *

The room is small, devoid of clutter save for a box or two and a mug. It’s _lonely_ , Jon reassures, and Gerry doesn’t have to ask for clarification, for an explanation of the Eye’s reluctance to get involved. 

Jon paces through the archives while he waits, no longer trusting himself to sit down, his hand always finding a pen as he let his mind wander, beginning to chart the movements of Monica through terror and pain, page ripped apart before a sentence could drop. He wonders if he’ll feel it when the original is burned, if the act will extract something from his mind. 

If it will hurt. 

He tries to find something to do besides wonder. 

In another room, Gerry takes a pointless breath, and begins. 

👁 

Gone. Gone, gone, fucking _gone_ , right? Final and real and just in denial, stupid, like I'm fucking stupid. Big, big, so fucking big and I can feel it bursting out like something important going, going, hurts without hurting, just the _feeling_ \-- as it takes me over, and I'm with it and I'm with _her_ \--  

I'm not stupid. Not dead. I know she's not dead because the scream went on for so, so long, forever and ever and I can still _hear_ it-- it must hurt. To scream for so long. I just wanted her to _breathe_ . So it helps, doesn't it? No one wants to be _smothered_ \-- that's the point in not saying it, right? In not saying anything for so long. No one should be forced to deal with how you feel, just-- at least to have the _option_ of-- 

Hurt hurts hurts too late too late nothing accomplished nothing done 

if they'd called it a 'freak' accident I would have killed them. Natural and perfect and organic and tearing through them all, the whole hall free, alive, and notes on my phone and messages and thank _god_ you weren't there and oh no I never would, not again, not after Hayley, not again, not that place, and isn't it so, so sad, all those people? Just monsters. Pushing and pushing and crushing and the _scream_ finally _stops_ and I go to school and I accidentally kill someone and things are always getting so big so fast too fast to catch and I know the days don't make sense because my nail polish is gone and chipping and changing and I haven't touched it, haven't been inside myself inside a home inside a body 

picture in the news bad bad so fucking bad if only people weren't idiots and understood what it means to fucking rest. Don't know if they deserve to know but I'm so tired just from hurting and nothing can sit _still_ not the right way not  

lungs blown out splattered across a wall explosively still but it doesn't bring her back never will never resting if I just knew where they _took_ her but it all goes so fast every day and it goes by and I can't catch it can't _find_ her 

I think I'm looking for answers but I can't feel myself half the time. I'm gone, floating out and away and the motions of my arms and hands mean something to _someone_ but not me and maybe I didn't want her to be lost in this too but at least she wasn't moving, at least she was _still_ and not _stuck_ not _smothered_ just _held_ and when they put her in the ground I can _feel_ it, I know I will, and it'll be too, too late, but I think this guy could be helping but it's all too big and he's dead again anyway, too fast to catch too 

So this is it, huh. 

I'm sorry, Hayley. 

I'm so, so sorry. 

👁

Gerry's breath shudders out, raspy and painful, as the last notes of he statement wash through his brain. He is left shaking in arms and hands, swallowing thickly as a tear threatens to crown from one eye. It is a few deep breaths and laying both arms on the flat of the table that begins to compose him, calm his body down from the image of it hovered above him, ending his surrogate young life.  

"Christ." Ends up being his only summary, the sole gift to the prying eye of the Watcher that surrounds him. 

Without filibuster, Gerry sighs, prepares, accepts. 

The pain starts before he’s even clicked the lighter. 

* * *

"So it hurt, huh?"  

Gerry is beside him now, one leg crossed over the other as he stares into his lap. He pulls his head up slowly, offers a soft smile to Jon when he reads the confusion on his face. 

"Burning my page. It hurt, then?" 

Jon's eyes widen, small surprise as if he's been caught, holding eyes with Gerry's as a thought swirls over his mind. 

"Not-- _terribly_ , it was certainly no...finger removal, at least, ah--" 

Then a small squint of eyes as he catches the hitch of Gerry's eyebrows, bemused and pitying. 

"Ah. You burned the statement, then." 

"Yes, Jon. Can't weasel your way out of me knowing how much it hurts." A smirk, tightened lightly with stress as he leans back on one arm, hand resting neatly beside Jon's hip on the fabric of the cot. 

"Well, I wasn't going to pretend it was _fun_ , just-- would _prefer_ people not have to worry about something that's already happ--" 

"Why?" 

Jon jumps at this, catches the serious pull of Gerard's expression as he leans in, almost threatening. 

"What? I--" 

"Why did you burn my page, Jon? If it hurt that much? If you barely knew me outside of one conversation?" 

"You-- you _asked_ me to, I got something from you, wouldn't it have been-- unfair? You said you were in _pain_ \--" 

"Yeah. And I was. But you never had to _deal_ with me. Could have shoved the page in artifact storage, jammed me in a box of statements somewhere, just never summoned me but kept all that juicy knowledge still _there_ , couldn't you?" 

"I-I _could_ have, but it-- you could have been used by someone _else_ , that...that's not what I promised." 

And Jon catches the softening of Gerry's expression, only for a moment before his head turns, stares down the opposing wall, 

"It was a lot to do for someone you just met, you know. It's just interesting--  knowing how much it hurts now. That kind of behaviour from someone real bent on convincing me he's some spectacular evil." 

Another smirk, eyes cast back down into his lap, watching the flex of his fingers as he talks. Jon follows his eyes, traces the nervous energy of Gerard's hand as the intensity of the message washes over him. He opens his mouth to respond, doesn't get a chance. 

"All pressure on the shoulders, right? Nothing too soft and wimpy?" 

"What? --Oh! Yes, that's it, and I suppose this is my berth of warning here?" 

"If it works for you." Gerry smiles, still knit through with a breath of nerves as he looks back at Jon. Jon rolls his eyes, pulls an arm up with mock exasperation, opens his body up as much as his position will allow. When Gerry's arms swallow him whole, though, the force feels far from calculated: deep grip over his shoulders that shocks him for a moment, ripples with aftershock when he feels the intensity his own arms return. He's surprised by it: how quick he is to curl his arms, his body into Gerry, how deep he shoves his head into the crook of Gerry's neck, the calm in his gut when he feels Gerry do the same. There is silence for a moment, just the desperate grip of safe passage through terror, closeness on the heels of psychic agony. It is a feeling Jon has not been used to feeling the breadth of, that consumes him as his hand grips the fabric rolling over Gerry's back. Then there is a breath from Gerry, slightly startled as he acclimates to the moment, before his voice stutters out into the tangle of Jon's hair. 

"...Thank you. Really. I can't-- Express how much it means to me." 

Jon feels himself swallow, takes a breath of his own in the thick cover of Gerry's hair. 

"It was...long enough ago it's really not a big deal. Really, it...it wasn't that bad." 

"First of all, it was. So don't be an asshole." Gerry laughs softly onto his neck as he says this, small sweep of air without the heat of breath that makes Jon shiver. 

"And second of all, it's not just that, Jon. Just sort of...everything." 

Gerard feels him inhale, slight hitch in his arms as he moves to protest,  

"Considering it's probably my _fault_ you've been dragged back, I can't--" 

Jon then feels the weight of Gerry's shoulder as he pulls an arm higher around Jon's head, shuts him up with the soft press of muscle and fat onto his face. He giggles when he feels the end of Jon's rebuttal smothered into his arm, the surprised contact with his still-moving lips. 

"Don't ruin a nice moment with that, for christ's sake. Do I have to keep you in a headlock to tell you something nice about yourself, Jon?" 

"...No." Jon relents, still muffled by shirt sleeve and muscle. Gerry relaxes his shoulders, doesn't break from Jon as long as he can still feel the steady hands on his back. 

"Good. Because I appreciate a lot of what you've done while I'm here, too. And if you say anything weird about that fact, I might get _properly_ mad at you this time." 

Jon sighs, a small breath that ends in a laugh, as his hands start to ease their pressure on Gerry's back. 

"No, I'll...take that, I promise. Thank you." And Gerry feels Jon's hands slide downward, lift away from him before he begrudgingly makes his own arms do the same. Jon puts both hands in his lap, stares into them as he thinks for a moment, does not feel how close Gerry remains when he leans back on the wall behind them. Doesn't feel the trace of Gerry's eyes over the soft curves of his profile, doesn't feel the way Gerry takes in the tired valleys of his eyes and the gentle knit of his eyebrows as his mind picks over its contents, assembles. Doesn't know that his mouth is being carefully watched when he pulls a breath in, moves it to speak: 

"I...appreciate a great deal of what you've done for me while you're here, Gerry. I'm not used to this sort of perception of me, frankly, the-- _quality_ of my character isn't usually given such a glowing review, either by myself or anyone else that works here. Taking this job showed me a lot about humility and then took the, ah, _unfortunate_ turn into showing me...how far I can fall from people's graces while I'm being hollowed out by something. _Despite_ my best efforts, but-- I guess it's too late to try and be human enough for some normalcy in how people respond to me. But that's why--" 

He stops for a breath, halting, stilted pronunciation as his thoughts rumble in his mind, topple over one another as he struggles to express them into his lap, 

"That's why it's so...surprising. To have this...normalcy? It's not about the attacks on the institute and the ways you've helped me with those, that's-- I appreciate that a great deal, I do, but it's just-- the way you _respond_ to me like this, I--" 

Another breath, intertwining nerves of proximity and vulnerability as he untangles the contents of his mind, 

"I haven't felt this... _human_ in quite some time. I don't think I can express just how much that part means to me-- _has_ meant to me in all the time I've spent with you." 

He throws an uneven brow and a shaking laugh onto his hands, speaking to Gerry through the intertwining digits. There is no laugh in return, just soft shock still rolling over Gerry's eyes in Jon's peripherals as he continues, 

"Should I-- Should I assume this means I've made up for my behaviour when you first came to the archives?" 

And when Jon turns again he feels a small spark of surprise as he realizes that Gerard is close -- _very_ close -- and the long-supressed need to fear him wells up at the base of the Archivist's mind. Stretched over that fear, however, is resolve, and he doesn't waver. He gives into the urge to understand, the newly-formed inclination to trust: tries to soak up the information of the ways people move around him and conduct themselves and why. And when Gerry speaks, it is low, and soft, spoken into the small breath of air hung tightly between them. 

"You've...more than made up for it, Jon. Yeah." And there is a softness to his voice that takes Jon by surprise: the gentle pluck of nerves still at the helm of his tone.  

Then, as Gerry's hand rests, soft, on Jon's arm, as lips press onto his own, all soft pressure on his bottom lip and that uncanny temperature of Gerry's skin, it suddenly seems relatively straightforward. Laying his lips on the Archivist's once, then twice, he hovers in place of a third, leaves a breath of vulnerability in the space between their teeth, their tongues, the gasping doorway to the centre of them.  

And waits. 

"...Ah. Ah, I--I see." Gerry is close enough that he can feel Jon's hand move up to adjust his glasses, nervously slide them back up the bridge of his nose. 

Gerry says nothing, just leans back on his arm enough to watch the way the Archivist taps his bottom lip, evaluating, analyzing, then runs it gently back over the skin in question: betraying less cerebral activity on the third iteration. 

Gerry doesn't move far, just a few inches back, with his hand still resting gently and bound by fingertips to Jon's sleeve. The Archivist finds him again easily across the small distance, brushing his lips over Gerard's with the same needless tension that spins through every other part of his being. The hand on Jon's arm slips forward, runs along his back and curls above his hip: wraps him in the tight pressure of safety, intensity, safety.  

There is a quiet desperation to the way the Archivist's hand grips the front of Gerard's shirt, presses urgent fingertips to the side of his neck as he kisses him, slides his lips over Gerry's and feels the cool hints of metal running over his bottom lip. Jon tells himself not to lose focus, but his mind is spinning and his mouth is moving methodically as he thinks, about Gerry's hands and the flash of his grin when amusement bursts onto him, always in spurts, and he thinks about the rough texture of the cot, of the way the threads spin together and how they feel pressed into the small of his back as Gerry leans into him, and he thinks about the last time he kissed someone and he thinks about the distance between that reality and this one, and he thinks about then and he thinks about now and he thinks about a future where he's doing this again and he wonders what his new mind does to his ability to imagine, and there is a slick hint of teeth on his lip that brings him back into the moment, into the energy of Gerard, for only a moment before his mind spins back out again. 

Gerry is present, grounded; hollow basin begging to be filled with the stimuli of Jon. He hears the soft, wet sounds of Jon's mouth on his, the familiar score of aloneness shared with another. He hears the way Jon's breath pulls in and out, hitches when he forgets to breathe, hears the soft intimacy of togetherness drowned in the enormity of scarcely occupied space: the soft sensory orchestra of their meeting. The way Jon's hands feel warm, feel _real_ as they press on Gerry's chest, over his back and into his hair sends his heart back for a moment just to beat, churn blood and reality back through his empty veins. He grabs a hand at one point, impulsive, clumsy, holds it to an empty chest and feels the mild sweat and pulls the cigarette-soaked smell of wool and cotton in as he grips it, runs a thumb over the palm. Jon pauses at this, head spinning, body occupied, feels his foot lodged under Gerry's knee without him having realized, feels the way Gerry is perfectly room temperature on his skin as he holds Jon's hand in his own. 

There is a quiet pause between them, the soft meandering of Gerry's thumb over Jon's palm the only thing tethering them to the reality of the moment. Jon feels lost, overwhelmed by the unknown structure of intimacy; pulls his arm over Gerry's neck tighter, pulls him into his chest. He feels Gerry exhale into his sweater, almost hotter than it is, but isn't. The silence is bizarre, comfortable, pressing as Gerry buries himself in Jon for a quiet moment. 

"This is the plan now, is it?" 

"It wasn't meant to be, I sort of--panicked. I can...let you up, if you want." 

Gerry's laugh is warm, fond as he breathes into Jon, reassures him: 

"This is just fine, Jon, I'm...not picky." 

Jon doesn't speak, just quietly runs a hand through the hair now resting under his chin, watching the way it slides through his fingertips and falls back to re-unite with the mass covering Gerry's back. He feels the shift of arms and shoulders around his waist, the tight pressure around his centre as Gerry buries deeper into his core. 

"This...alright?" He speaks it into Jon's sweater, embrace relaxing slightly as he does so. 

"Yes, it-- I promise this is a context where this is...very much okay." 

"Mm." Is what floats up from the face buried in his chest, and Jon runs his hand through Gerry's hair once more in response: loses himself in the motion. He stares up at the sliver of window afforded to the archive's back room, parting Gerard's hair absentmindedly as he lets his mind wander. He can feel Gerry awake under his hand, soaking in the quiet reprieve from activity and exhaustion as Jon explores him with his fingertips. The day slowly begins to catch up with him as he does so: as he allows himself to feel it. 

"I hope it's alright if I...fall asleep, actually. Not that this isn't-- its not an...unwelcome surprise. It's just been somewhat of a long day."  

There is a warm laugh breathed through Jon's sweater into his skin, stomach floating, descending with the reality of the situation. 

"Be my guest," is spoken, once again, into the bundle of fabric at his chest. The arms circling his waist loosen, prop Gerry up to meet his eyes once again. There is still a strand of hair in Jon's hand as he does so, suspended between them as Gerry hovers once more in that impossible breath of proximity. 

"Didn't mean to make it longer. But, you know. Important business to attend to here." 

"Right."  

The intimacy of face to face conversation is more than the Archivist can bear, face flush, eyes casting to the side as he fiddles with his collar.  

"'Right'." Gerry chirps back. Jon knows there's a grin that comes with the mirrored phrase even without seeing it, and Gerry lifts off of him without extending the moment to its potential limits. A stretch of arms over his head as he walks, and he's out almost before his head hits the pillow. 

Jon breathes sharply, pulls his glasses off and presses a thumb and finger to the bridge of his nose. He hesitates for a moment before moving to put them on the desk behind him, holds them up lightly so he can see the outlines of Gerry clearly for one final instant. He takes a moment to trace the curve of Gerry's spine, catch the lines of moonlight on his arms and soaked through his hair as he breathes. 

"Hm." Is his only conclusion before he sets them aside, dropping into sleep with equal intensity the moment he allows himself to. 

The room is silent but for the belabored snoring of his undead companion and his own soft, tempered breaths beneath it. 

* * *

It is a few days, then, of investigation and planning, of Gerard and Basira researching protection measures afforded by their common entity, of Jon moving in and out of the archives on the whims of his mind's eye. The soft undercurrent of fear is its usual motivation as the Archivist investigates the movement of the entities and their disciples: the churning gambit of ritual and plan. 

It is on a Saturday when Jon realizes the demonic time frame is significantly more lenient than he'd been dreading. Cross-referencing and poring over statements had delivered him a newfound berth of time with which to plan, to make decisions without the _impending_ aspect of doom feeling like a significant part of the equation. 

It is with an old tape that Gerry comes down into the archives, having found it wedged in exactly the spot Jon had led him to when absentmindedly asked. When Gerry holds it up, offers it to the form of the Archivist pulling up from his desk, he is met under the shadow of a long archive bookshelf looming over the centre of the room. It is against this bookshelf that he feels the pressure of the Archivist, hands sliding lightly over either side of his face as the Archivist's lips lay over his. He feels the gentle pressure of the Archivist leaning into him, moving his mouth over Gerry's once, twice as the hand not holding the tape wraps around Jon's back in return, pulls him deeper into his chest than skin will allow.  

Gerry loses himself: curls his hand into the fabric of the Archivist's sweater as he runs his lips over Jon's, feels the quiet hunger of Jon wrapping over his mouth as hands slide over his shoulders, wander into his hair. Feels the draw of his lower lip into the Archivist's mouth, the hot pressure and slide of saliva as his nose presses urgently into Jon's cheek. An asynchronous moment, a light clacking of teeth, Jon digging hands into his hair with such ferocity that Gerry forgets to breathe. 

Jon is zoning out, always zoning out, staying as local as he can as his attention floats over Gerry, buries itself in the feeling of Gerry's chest under his and the tug of cloth as his hand twists into Jon's sweater and the discordant heat of their meeting, wet variations on a theme. He is aware, vaguely, of Gerry's tongue in his mouth as he loses himself in sensation, his focus in a pool of tactile rapture. Feels the way Gerry traces along his teeth at the gums, the way it feels so secure to dig a hand into a mass of slick fibre pouring from Gerry's skull and the warmth of Gerry's leg where it rests beneath his own. Jon pulls his focus in, tries to match the fervent energy with which Gerry rolls over his tongue, traces the roof of his mouth as a hand runs under his shirt, clutches blindly at the skin on his back. It is when a thumb presses into Jon's hip, slides under the the hem of his trousers and runs a line along his pelvis that he breaks, sudden and with an energy that almost topples him as he moves backwards, away from Gerry. 

"Sorry! --Sorry." Gerry is flush, wide-eyed as he tucks a wave of hair behind his ear, leaves one strand sweat-stuck to his forehead. 

"It's--been a while. Didn't mean to come at you like a horny college student." 

"Oh no it's-- not you, trust me." Jon says, both of them breaking eyes and staring at the surrounding bookshelves in lieu of each other, 

"Did you...go to college?" 

"...No." Gerry admits, studying the dust pattern on a nearby shelf with unearned intensity, "Mom had, ah, _other_ plans for me by that point." 

"Yes, sorry, o-of course." Jon fumbles, stealing a glance at Gerry's taut profile before breezing past him, pausing at the door. 

"Probably should have, ah-- I had work to do I probably shouldn't have interrupted. Sorry, Gerry, I'll-- see you tonight." 

"Right." 

Gerry leans back on the shelf as he hears Jon's steps down the hall, feeling the ghost of him knit into the back of his head, the residing warmth spreading over his face. 

Gerry chainsmokes, his habit when he's nervous. After a particularly shaky inhale on his sixth cigarette, he figures a body full of hair might not be as suited to hot air as he'd hoped, pitching the half-smoked dart to the ground and watching the ember tumble uselessly in the wind. Breathing out the final vestiges of his reprieve, he abandons the idea of chemical relaxation, forces himself back inside. He doesn't bother pretending he has anything better to do than see his stress to its logical conclusion, burning through the neurotic energy as he paces the length of the archives, back and forth. He realizes, finally, that he's been stomping around in a floor length jacket and dirt-covered boots, letting himself relax as his mind starts to erode its own motivation for concern.  

He fills the day in an imitation of productivity, holed up in the back room reading vaguely pressing statements and associated literature until the sun begins to set. 

When the Archivist returns, he is surprised to find Gerry standing by his cot, smoke trailing partially out the cracked window from a cigarette hanging loosely in Gerry's lips. 

"You're...smoking? In the archives?" 

"Jon," Gerry starts, shocked movement of his lips threatening to drop the minute fire hazard to the floor, 

"I-- didn't even think while I was lighting it up, I got...distracted. Noticed it was getting dark. Made me...ancy, you know?" 

He moves to ash the cigarette before Jon waves a hand over it, stopping him. 

"Don't bother, it's-- it's fine. You can finish it. I didn't mean to...leave you alone, this close to night time. I'm sorry." 

"Big day?" 

"Just...needed to go farther than I realized." This was, technically, true. 

"Alright." It's strained, forced casual tone as he stares out the window, blows the smoke at the pitiful crack afforded to the outside. Jon shifts behind him, clutching the coat draped over his arm. 

"I'm...sorry. About earlier." 

"Me too." 

Jon squints at this, knocked off the course of his own hesitation by surprise. 

"Why are... _you_ sorry?"  

"Dunno." Gerry shrugs, still not facing Jon as he sucks the dangerously short nub of his cigarette, clinging to his social alibi. 

"Just sort of one of those things when you make yourself vulnerable, isn't it? Feels weird. Makes you want to apologize a lot." He looks at Jon over his shoulder, now, finally folding to the reality of his cigarette's lifespan, 

"You do understand that when you stare death in the face with someone it can feel...intimate, right? You don't actually owe me a particular _format_ of that, if you're not interested. I understand it can be kind of...confusing navigating the kind of intense emotions this line of work brings." 

"Right. I've made this difficult, haven't I?" Jon buries his head in one hand then, brows knit as he frowns into his palm, 

"It was with... _some_ small surprise I realized I was interested, but that wasn't my concern." 

"Oh-- didn't know you were into men?" 

"Not as such, no. I imagine it probably would have been more of a revelation before getting kidnapped semi-regularly and being hollowed out by a fear demon." 

"Yeah. Apocalyptic threats on your life will put things into perspective like that." There's a smirk from Gerry at this, albeit a tighter one than usual. 

"No, you...being here has made me _significantly_ happier than anything I could try and name in . .. _years_ , frankly." 

Jon misses the flattered tuck of hair behind Gerry's ear, the nervous re-arranging of his person. 

"But I don't like to be...optimistic about being lucky with certain things more than once." 

"Don't mean to cut into your neuroses too hard, but if I'm not broadcasting interest at this point I'm not actually sure what else you need from me." The grin relaxes, spreads wider over his face as he pulls the familiar feeling of playful barbs back into the room. 

"That's-- thank you, but there is...little I can provide in return, unfortunately." 

"Not sure I follow." 

"It's an uncomfortable topic, sorry. Easier to beat around the bush than face it head on, um," Jon doesn't expand on this for a moment, hand nervously fussing his hair, running it back over his head in a familiar attempt to self-sooth.  

"I don't...have sex? I don't have sex. At all. Ever." 

A silent stare is his response, then a rolling of Gerard's focus over Jon: his arms, the tight curl of his posture, the nervous peak of his eyebrows under the soft tumble of his hair.  

"...Huh. That's a new one on me. Weird."  

"I'm _aware_ it's _weird_ _,_ Gerry. Otherwise what would be the point in bringing it up?" 

"Sorry, sorry. Then what, uh. What _do_ you do?" 

"Not much, frankly." He pulls a laugh, too dry to be one of genuine amusement. 

"Try me."  

"I don't have an itemized _list_ , just-- I find if it's, _explicitly_ sexual I...tend to lose interest. Quickly." 

"Huh. And I'm supposed to take what from this, exactly?" 

"That I'm not a candidate for a fulfilling relationship? It seemed like sort of an _obvious_ conclusion." 

"I'm sure it would to you. No shortage of self-loathing in that wiry little body." 

"You don't need to make _fun_ of me for it--" 

"I'm not! I'm not-- trying to." There is a hand on Jon's, then, thumb rubbing into his palm as Gerry reaches over, tries to meet his eyes. 

"I'm sorry. I just-- I don't think not getting _laid_ is the most urgent thing in the life of people being consumed by fear demons and under constant attack, is it? Do you really think that's the kind of thing that makes or breaks your importance to me?" 

There is a falter on both of them, sentimentally expressed a little more loosely than Gerry had intended. 

"I don't know how to know, frankly." Jon admits, eyes still finding stimuli in the room around him that doesn't belong to another human. 

"It's a fairly fundamental part of the human experience that I'm lacking. I'm not sure how to be a...human, for another person if I can't manage that." 

Another laugh, even drier than the first, 

"And that was _before_ I became a monster, if you can believe it." 

Gerry lays his head on top of Jon's, still holding his hand between them. 

"God, you're a pain in the ass, you know that?" He rubs Jon's hand in his, leans into his hair. Jon doesn't protest. 

"You don't think that makes it more human? That you're still the same on that front? It sounds like a part of 'human Jon' to me." 

"Now I'm not-- I'm not actually sure what you're saying," Jon admits, hints of lostness in the voice he speaks into Gerry's neck. 

"I'm interested, Jon. Still. I don't think you get to make me feel the way you have and, ah, get rid of me just by being a little weird about fucking. I'm a bit more stubborn than that." 

A sharp exhale from Jon, reluctant return of Gerry's affectionate fiddling of his hand. 

"...You still jerk off?" 

" ** _Gerry_** \--" Jon pulls back, shocked laugh on his lips as Gerry catches him off guard. 

"Sorry! Sorry, it's a new concept, is all."  

"We _are_ still at work, you know." 

"Ah, sorry. Schedule me an HR call in the morning, then." 

A pause from Gerry, contemplative,  

"Kissing's still on the table, then?" 

Jon rolls his eyes, 

" _Yes_ , Gerry, kissing is _fine_." 

"Don't _roll_ your eyes at me. Like I said, it's new to me. The whole process is usually all sort of one conceptual jumble, you know." 

Jon pulls a face, opens his mouth to reply, be he's cut off by the sudden feeling of Gerry on his lips, thumb running over his wrist as Gerry leans in to meet him. He breaks quickly, keeping his hand circled around Jon's arm, 

"That's alright, then?" 

"Yes." says Jon, a little winded, "Yes that's--that's fine."

"Okay."  

He returns, slides his mouth over Jon's bottom lip, feeling that light surprise in the pause before it's returned, adorably chaste. He moves his head, hand in the base of Jon's hair and shifting to lay his lips on Jon's again, and again, and again, before pulling away, 

"Alright?" 

"Jesus _christ_ , Gerry." 

"Not much of a poker face. That's a yes?" 

" _Yes._ It's _fine_." 

"Flattered." Gerry laughs, returns to a much less patient Jon who wraps his arms over Gerry's back, pulls him into a much trickier potential escape. Gerry is laughing as Jon pulls him in, hot amusement over Jon's teeth as they meet.  

Gerry is careful this time, slow escalation, hands not riding up into any clothing as he kisses Jon, runs the tip of his tongue on a lip in the least obtrusive way he can manage. Relents when it isn't met with escalation, then feels the hot rush in his stomach when Jon's tongue hits his in response a moment later. Tries to maneuver his overzealous dick to a place where it won't bump up against Jon's leg and bother him. The warmth of Jon is reassuring; safe tightness despite the undercurrent of excitement as they kiss. It's when Gerry places a poorly-planned hand on Jon's inner thigh that he receives a "good _l_ _ord_ , no", Jon jumping back before he can catch himself. 

"That's pretty clear, then." 

"S-sorry" Jon fumbles, adorable flush and stutter. Gerry has to bite his tongue not to point either out. 

"Don't be. Easier for you to say things you _don't_ like, then?" 

"It just _surprised_ me--" 

"More comfortable talking about things you dislike than asking for things you like?" 

"Don't be an _ass_." 

"I'm making observations! It'll help me out if you're as enthusiastic letting me know what you like, you know. New territory and all that." 

"I'm sure your skills of deduction have been _perfectly_ adequate at assessing that so far." 

"Maybe. Still nice to hear it." 

Gerry leans over, then, runs another kiss over Jon's lips before hovering over them, unmoving. 

"...yes, Gerry. That's _lovely_." It's dripping with so much venom Gerry almost tears up. 

"Good to hear." 

Sliding his lips to the side, holding a thumb on Jon's chin, he tilts it, kisses his jaw. 

"Oh! ...Alright. Yes, I suppose." 

"Not a fan?"

"Don't have particularly strong feelings about it, frankly. Sort of a new one on me." 

Gerry laughs, soft, warm chuckle onto Jon's throat as he moves down, kisses the side of his neck. He lets Jon get away with a sharp inhale on the first attempt, dipping his head back in for a second. 

"Oh-- a- _absolutely_ ," 

The breathy delivery disrupts Gerry's foresight, sends his arm around Jon's waist as he sucks the spot on Jon's neck, delights at the surprised breath that rumbles out of Jon. _Fuck_ . He was supposed to be a bit more _methodical_. 

He runs his lips along his neck, then, tries to resist the urge to clamp down on a main artery as he runs another kiss into Jon's collar, then another. 

"Yes, uh--" Jon clears his throat, professional as ever as his hand circles Gerry's arm, 

"Definitely." 

Gerry loses himself in this for a moment, listening to the soft breaths that float from Jon as his lips slide over muscle and vein, feeling the run of skin as Jon's hand twitches on his arm, periodically squeezing. Feels the meandering thoughts of what the sensations might mean for someone without a future trajectory. It is when his mouth slides up to the base of Jon's ear that an impulse moves through him, brings his voice up and out into the spiral of flesh into Jon's mind, 

"I saw a ghost once when I was fourteen." 

Jon's response is airy, a small gasp as he tries to follow, 

"I'm sorry?"  

"A ghost. I saw a ghost one time." 

"Gerry is this-- is this making you want to make a _statement_?" 

"...Maybe?" It borders on sheepish, thick laughter following into Jon's ear. The Archivist is swept up in it, delighted chuckle that sings through Gerry's system. 

"Tell me more about this _ghost_ , Gerry." The mockery is thick, charming in that over affected professionalism of Jon, increasingly hilarious as the two of them intertwine.  

"Like I said," His delivery is husky, a comical parody of his own motivations, 

"I saw a ghost. I was fourteen. Hotel with mum. He was kind of hot." 

"You saw your first ghost and you found him _attractive_." The ribbing is slightly less convincing as Jon's hand digs into the fabric at the small of Gerry's back, moves with the force of Jon as he parks a leg on the back room's cot. 

"Well, he was. I didn't _kno_ _w_ he was a ghost at first, not entirely. Just saw a fit vactioner in the wrong hotel room." Gerry's body follows, rests an arm on the wall behind them as he leans into Jon, interrupts his almost-busy mouth. He doesn't know what facsimile of an organ jumps when Jon's hand runs over his exposed hip, explores the shape and softness of the fat without a shred of urgency. Jon's lips slide off of his, pull a small grin that he can feel the ghost of. 

"Didn't question how he'd got in?" 

The delay of breath betrays Gerry's overwhelm,  

"I told you I was a stoned, miserable little fucker. Not _beyond_ me to leave a door unlocked." 

"Careless. Can't believe you're not haunted by the spirit of a hot single after that." 

"I'm sure fourteen year old me _wouldn't_ have minded."  

Jon presses a cautious kiss to his neck, then, and Gerry betrays himself with a deeper sound than he'd planned. There's a laugh from Jon, high and nerve-tinged before he runs his lips over the scruff lining Gerry's jaw. The way Gerard's hand grips his hip is firm, urgent in a way Jon has never known what to do with: suspended in the curve of a line with no end. 

"Getting bored of my ghost story? I was having fun." 

"Tell me whatever ghost stories you like, Gerry." The mocking tone is undercut by his enjoyment of the other, face buried in hair and neck and sweat as he tries to puzzle out his deadlines on intimate activity. 

"Like I said," Gerry's hand slides up Jon's side away from his hip, rests awkwardly in his armpit when he realizes the dangerous proximity, 

"Thought he was just some lost tourist. Said, 'Hey,' 'cause I wasn't sure what else to do, and I notice he's got this kind of, grey tone to him, not totally natural, _real_ sad eyes I shouldn't haven't been able to see that far in the dark," 

He feels the breath Jon exhales onto his neck, tries to hear the sweet sound of his enraptured mind on the wordless air, 

"Honestly wasn't really sure what to do after that. Just kind of stared at him for a while." 

The breath spins out as a chuckle this time, dry with Jon's chiding amusement. He leans back, raises his eyebrows up over his off-kilter glasses. 

"If the horror of this ghost story is supposed derive from your lack of self-preservation instincts, Gerry, mission accomplished." 

"Don't be a dickhead." Gerry returns. 

"I _do_ see what you're doing here, by the way. I...appreciate the supplemental interaction." Jon's smirk is nerve-soaked, gorgeous. 

"Like seeing you get worked up over these, anyway. It's cute." 

Jon's response is swallowed, shaky grin pulling up lopsided as he picks a wall to distract himself with: overwhelmed and flattered. Gerry laughs, vaults himself onto the reclined Archivist, watches the soft fluster on his face before he bends down to kiss him. Feels his own lips pull into a smile over Jon's when he feels a finger brush over the metal on his lip, indefinite wandering of the Archivist's curiosity. When he pulls up, hangs over Jon within a veil of hair, Jon looks slightly starstruck. 

"Oh...abso _lutely_." 

Gerry piques his eyebrow, then, tries to track the wandering mind of the man beneath him, 

"Sorry?" 

And Jon meets his eyes at this, embarrassed hitch of his brow as he looks up in turn, 

"Sorry, were we not...still playing?" 

Gerry's laughter rolls over him as he drops onto his side, a warmth of understanding that fills the room around them. 

* * *

Gerry wakes to the sight of the Archivist pacing anxiously beside him, familiar coffee-filled cup wobbling unevenly in his hands. He takes two steps towards Gerry, pulls a face, then one step away, mouthing a small string of decisions to himself every time he takes a pause. Gerry opts to break the cycle before the free caffeine is carted entirely away by Jon's neuroses. 

"That for me?" He pitches, sleepy eyes meeting Jon's on one of his returning trips accross the hardwood.  

"It was, until I started worrying it might be...painfully domestic." Jon confesses, smile already pulling shyly upwards at one corner. He feels Gerry's hands brush over his as he reaches for the cup, pulls it, gentle, from his trembling fingertips. 

"Too late. Give it." He smirks, eyes still fondly sat on Jon's as he pulls back a sip. 

"This my official archive cup now, is it?" 

Jon smiles, still with the ghost of tension as he lets himself sit on the couch across from Gerry. Gerry watches his hands, shifting knuckle over knuckle in his lap, branches of intent and action tracing each other's realities. It occurs to Gerry, as he's sleepily sucking back coffee, that this is the result of nerves: Jon's posture cradled in on itself in a thicket of ill-fitting limbs and lost momentum. He catches a leg start to bounce under Jon's elbow as he stares into the wall, squeezes taught the skin over his bones. 

Gerry takes a moment to fight with himself: the steeling of himself to the reality of their adulthood and autonomy, the screaming need to connect and interlock with another. The endlessly prodding question of _are you_ _alright?_ , destined to be asked back and forth without ever receiving an affirmative answer. But desperate, desperate to ask for a yes as care worms a hole in the centre of his body, watches the way the soft warmth of Jon's hands roll over one another. 

Jon saves him from the ambivalence as Gerry's cup drains, placed on its throne atop a beat-up box of statements. His hands still with the lack of distraction, empty mouths hovering in a cluttered room. 

"There is...something I would like to show you, Gerry." 

Jon tells this to the wall, but Gerry listens, anyway, 

"If, ah--i-if we're going to be _entangled_ like this I think you-- you ought to know." 

And there are eyes on his, light impact of psychic stress on human iris. Gerry doesn't like the way Jon chooses his words, the tangle of Gerry complicating the threads of Jon. 

"That's-- a lie," he clarifies, chews his lip with the idle attention of the same ball of nerves, 

"I'd prefer not to show you this at _all_ , actually, but-- even if you didn't likely _deserve_ to know, I'm sure you're probably a bit too _aware_ not to figure it out, anyway." 

And there's one of those humourless laughs, terrifying hollow, as Jon puts his hands on his knees and stands. Gerry doesn't appreciate the ambiguity of the reference to his _awareness_ , either: flattery of his perceptions that digs its fingers into his inhumanity. 

He thinks about holding Jon's hand on the way out, anyway. 

* * *

 The street is nondescript: greying cobblestone and lifeless brick walls that fade from the attention of his peripherals. The amount of tar on his tongue does not escape his notice as Jon lights cigarette after cigarette, the fury with which he smokes them escalating as they continue to walk. It's an alley that finally stops them, lightly threatening under the grey swirl of their cloudy sky, and the look Jon casts into it broadcasts an anxious frustration, interrupted by hot plumes of smoke. Gerry waits, watching Jon pull in tainted air as his face moves in time with a mind full of half-drowned thoughts. Finally, eyes cast to shoes and tobacco lighting onto cotton, he speaks: 

"Can you...see anything? On the ground here?" 

Gerry follows his eyes, traces the shapes and texture of the stone-splattered road, but despite his best efforts it's all just rock; grey and damp and mundane. 

"No. It's just a road for me, Jon." 

And Jon sighs, bending down until his hand can reach the ground, rubbing the butt of his cigarette in a hot line across the stone. Then Gerry watches the trace of his finger, hesitant, then gentle, over the patterns of something he cannot see. 

"It would have made for an easier leeway but-- it's likely a _good_ thing you can't." 

And Jon's eyes roll over the ground, that misty Sight of unseen horrors, and despite his usual fondness nerves prickle on the base of his brain, edge him closer to Jon's intent. 

" _Jon_." 

Small start, release of breath, hand still lightly tracing over the earth. 

"Maggots." He clarifies. His hand stills. 

"I can still see the maggots." 

Gerry doesn’t speak, feels the parting of his mouth as he watches Jon’s eyes, the subtle movement of frantic iris as his mind and mouth work to intersect. 

“I am... _not_ kidding about being a monster.” Is the first not Gerry recieves, tongue held as he feels the weight of Jon’s words over his chest, bloomed stubbornly into his spirit. 

“I was—I considered doing the _first_ , showing you—giving you the explanation of the first time it happened, but. The fact that it wasn’t singular makes it less sympathetic of a story, regardless.” 

Jon’s hand has begun again, now: sad, slow lines that trace the bodies on the ground that Gerry cannot see: hypnotic nest of filth and terror. 

“So this was—this _is_ the most recent. I figure the first one—Paul, was his name, ah—doesn't need me showing up at his work again, he’s--” 

And it’s one of those laughs, dry and angry, humourless hatred as his head points down, aimed towards his heart: 

“I’m sure he’s seen enough of me. 

“Sorry, I’m getting—I'm stalling. This is where I was the last time I--” 

One more fearful swallow, just for good measure. 

“The last time I pulled a statement out of someone.” 

There are details, horror and trauma, second-hand through Jon’s lips, gliding over his hands as he regurgitates the tale to Gerry: the reluctance of the confession and the wet slap of the man’s sobs on stone, the elation of its finish and the stumbling exit of the man, terror ripped fresh from his cracked-open mind. Gerry misses some, catches others, as the meaning of Jon’s leading words squirm into his skull. 

The understanding crawls up Gerry, worms its way between the lines of his tattoos, the knowledge seeping into his skin through counterfeit eyes as Jon’s words wash over his mind. There is a creak within him, door to understanding pulled open, a wave of cold terror and fury poorly bottled in recesses of his mind. He feels the hand that opens it, otherworldly, as his Self is plunged into the familiar feeling of understanding: drowned in emotion and revelation, fact grinding harshly into spirit. 

He has never reveled in the process, and it pulls at him with the invasive pressure of familiarity, fear, rattling upheaval of a balanced mind. 

“Oh, **_god--”_ ** 

It hums out of him thickly, wet and ragged, a note on Gerry’s voice still unfamiliar to Jon, equal parts disquieting. The continuation escalates to terror, whether through relation or observation, as the words roll out of Gerry, tumble over each other and force themselves from his mouth, _gods_ crawling angrily over _ohs_ as they scream past Gerry’s teeth, endless regurgitation of impossible acceptance. His hands grip desperately into themselves as he watches the ground, eyes distant over his scrambling mouth, proximity to the tangible rendered absurd. 

“--god oh god _oh_ **god** , fucking, **_christ_ **, I can’t--” 

Thick swallow, wet eyes, mouth moving helplessly, lip over lip, as words stop and mind careens, breakneck, faster than a body can carry. 

“I can’t-- I can’t fucking _do_ this, I--” 

He still stares a hole through the ground, pierces it into a distance beyond the earth, empty space and meaningless air, 

“I spent so _long_ —so _fucking_ long trying not to—as a kid, fighting the urge to hurt myself was _so hard_ because I—that's _all_ anything around me wanted to do to me, do you understand? There is so much _benefit_ to me hurting, to a child being in _pain_ and I—it's so _easy_ to add to it, so you have to _work_ to see value, it takes so much fucking effort not to take it out on yourself when you’re so _miserable_ and then I’ve got—all that effort wasted, just to be a _pain sink_ for some demonic _voyeur_ and I can’t-- _this is my only choice_ ? This is _all_ I can choose? Just pushing my life forward thinking, at least I can fucking accomplish something, at least I know how this all _works_ so I can spread some amount of fucking—god, _insight_ , or _something_ and now it’s just—all I get to choose is who _suffers_ ? _That’s_ the culmination of my _entire_ pointless existence? Really? I can’t--I fucking _can’t._ " 

Jon’s eyes are wide, panicked domes, heart clenched inside prison of bone and skin, trapped with extremities and air as surrogate outlets: insufficient, failing. 

“I’m sorry, Gerry, I’m so—I didn’t think this would be—I just wanted you to know what I’ve been doing, I didn’t--” 

Mind carried through mouth in equal discordance, struggling and fearful as he watches Gerry breathe, grind his fists into the ground. Racing his mind through hallways, reference points, history and snapshot: the ground, solid earth, an _anchor;_ then—     

Jon reaches his hands out, careful and still through the whipping ferocity of his nerves, palms up as they hover in the air above the ground, eye-level. 

“...What is this.” Gerry doesn’t have the energy to pique the end into a question. Exhausted words shot forward in a straight line, angry flare of confusion and pain. 

“I didn’t want to touch you if you—th-they're here for you. If you need them.” 

A nervous swallow, steadying nerves, solidifying the waver of humanity into earth, rockbed, solid ground. 

“J-just in case you needed something to--to hold on to.” 

Jon expects hands or anger, concession or refusal, but the weight is different, shocking after a minute: Gerry’s head pressed into his palms, hands still angry on stone as Jon feels a furious breath over one palm, then the other. He keeps them suspended, feels the weight of Gerry as it distributes over his fingers, the abnormal rushes of air and anger over his knuckles until there’s finally a breath, slow and rumbling, Gerry’s last expression of breakneck pain. He breathes calmly, as much as he is able, air taken in and released in concentrated measures, his hands finally splitting from fists to open palms on the ground as he feels the cold reassurance of stone.  

“...Thanks.” He manages, half into Jon’s sweater. The force of their meeting had sent Jon’s hands back into himself, Gerry’s head cradled just over his lap as static-lined hair clings to the knit of his shirt. He feels it when Gerry rolls his head to one side, feels the brush of hair and skin against his chest, gambling on a soft run of his hand over Gerry’s hair. The noise that leaves Gerry is almost too close to a cry, pitchy and high, but it does not return when Jon runs a line through his hair, then another.  

“I don’t know what to do with this.” Gerry tells him, and he tells him into a fold in his sweater that he can see through his unobstructed eye, and the other blinks a soft row of eyelashes over the pad of Jon’s thumb. The fold of the sweater is dense and round, and the shadow that clings to its underside is soft and subtle and purple with darkness against the green, and he wants to paint it. 

“I know, Gerry. I’m sorry.” 

And Gerry feels the hand run down his back, trepidatious, still knit between layers of hair as it rolls over him, catches on a small tangle before it reaches the end. 

“How the fuck have you been dealing with this.” Still no question, no rise in pitch. A voice grounded by agony, rubbed into the dirt. 

“I haven’t been, really. I’ve just been—moving forward, with my best approximation of what ‘forward’ is. Sometimes forwards feels exactly the way I _shouldn’t_ be moving either, but—there's no other direction I can ever see.” 

Gerry lets out a final sigh, moves his chest away from the feigned need for breath, settling back to its usual still as he eases himself back up, hand running softly over waterline bled dry. 

“But what I said before--” Jon continues, feels the pull of muscle through his core as he stares at Gerry’s profile: taught distress and haunted resignation. 

“Not having to do this alone, I’m--I’m here, alright? What you said about being lost _together,_ it’s—” 

Another small hesitation, effects of action weighed, then the resting of his palm on the back of Gerry’s hand, dirt crushed into the creases as it sits on his leg. Barely there, the inherent question of its allowance in the lack of pressure before the other palm meets his, open skyward. Jon rolls fingerprint over muscle, clumsy with the still-unfamiliar terror of reassurance, the intricacies of human emotion.  

When he looks back up Gerry’s eyes have returned, dark and exhausted, and fear and safety tumble through his mind at their meeting. 

“You're right. I didn’t think about—about what this sort of information might mean for you, I’m sorry. I just—I just wanted to be honest, and I thought that, if we _are_ both stuck here like this at least—at least I _know_ some things now, I have—I can’t promise I’ve been through the _worst_ , but, as—as long as we’re both so infested with information, at the very least I, I could try and offer you some you could actually _use._ ” 

Jon’s eyes float back down to Gerry’s hands, but they don’t linger, returning to the deep brown that still watches him, unwavering.   

“And what _I_ said before, about statements, that—you don’t _have_ to hurt, Gerry, not yourself, o-or others, not—not yet, anyway, at least for a while—there aren’t only options that hurt, Gerry, I’m—I’m sure of it.” 

And Jon's hand weaves a nervous pattern into Gerry’s, now, unsure and erratic, and Gerry traces them with his mind, records the information, close to art. 

“I’ve got statements, too, of a nature you can _use_ , I—a burning handshake, a lungful of rapid air, I—you won’t starve, I won’t let you.” 

Gerry snorts at this one, finally returns the nervous pace of fingertip over skin, practiced stability of an artist’s hand.  

“Some fun _variables_ there for my new haunted brain to play around with, huh?” Gerry laughs, and the relief that floods Jon is hot, immediate: rushing down his arms to his fingers so fast he’s sure Gerry must be able to feel it. 

“I guess _staying_ dead’s a bit too much _lackadaisy_ for someone with a bunch of haunted destiny in his veins. New haunted mum to tell me to get out of bed and commit some _miscellaneous evil—_ ” 

Jon laughs, knows he’s allowed to, watches the crinkle of Gerry’s smile into his eyes with transparent enjoyment. They don’t stand for a while, hands connected and eyes staring, weird and unsettling communique as Jon’s eyes dig into Gerry’s, curl into the depth of their details and rest in the comfort of their calming dark, the gorgeous line of their sculpt against sclera. Gerry knows, a little better than Jon, it’s weird, has a little more sense of how time passes, of expectations in wordless spaces—but he can _feel_ the enjoyment, expression slightly stupid as Jon’s focus crawls into him, through him, nestles in wordless parts he doesn’t blink to hide, and he rolls his mind under the idea of _safety_ even under observation, even while so deeply _touched._ And Jon remembers, after a while, that he’s worried about being _weird_ , and that there’s expectations when people connect that he should remember, or fake, or give up and ask about after a week of worry—and Gerry’s sad to see the strange burn of his eyes go, intense as they are, inhuman burst of colour and line, drinking in detail and meaning.  

“S-sorry,” Jon offers, tucks a strand of hair behind his ear, already learning, patterns etching, 

“Ok.” Is Gerry’s gift in return, because it’s still new, and it’s hard for him, even if Jon assumes otherwise. He watches the sheepish smile on Jon instead of searching for words, feels the acceptability on their interaction reaching its expiration. Jon removes them first, positions himself to stand. Gerry accepts the following offer of help up, if only for a brief rerun of held eyes and hands. The look Jon gives him is more human, though, hands pulled tight over arms as he throws a lopsided smile.  

“I, ah—I did cut my finger off a few times, actually, if you get hungry and—that one’s a little less upsetting than the others, I think, if—if you’d like to start small.” 

Gerry’s face is _not_ reassuring. 

“I-it grew _back,_ " Jon promises.  

Gerry _does_ laugh, then, starts the walk back, hands back in pockets as the intensity of the moment passes, eases them into normalcy as humanity rumbles in their peripherals. He remembers himself, too late, hand shifting a few inconclusive times before committing to the outside air, pulled out and then wound into Jon’s. Jon’s step stutters, almost robotic, and Gerry forgets to walk for half a step, and both do the favour of being too distracted to notice the other’s moment of adjustment. Gerry clears his throat, unnecessary, but Jon _may_ not know that he doesn’t have phlegm any longer. 

“Metal crowd’s not all that distinct from punk.” Gerry leads, and they’re back on a real street now, and they’re connected as they’re forced to weave. 

“Alright.” Jon tries to prompt, not excited enough, a few too many moving _variables_ — 

“Could scout one out. Beat the shit out of a skinhead. You think that’s enough of a haunted encounter for one to get _tasty_?” 

Jon’s laugh is nervous, thrilled, as his hand tightens over Gerry’s as they walk, as he marvels in the solidity of his presence, the structure of his mind. 

“I’ve got to do something for you in return, then, don’t I?” He says it through a laugh, almost winded, as Gerry feels the absent brush of his thumb, the manifestation of his always-moving spirit, as he hears the grounding of his care, his devoted compassion. 

“You’ve already got grizzly stories to tell me. Let _me_ get some haunted enjoyment out of his, huh?” 

He might trace the look of a weird passerby or two with his eyes, disapproving, just in case. Filing, sorting, cataloguing information— _just in case_. 

When they return, there’s Work; Jon’s serious drop into duty, into the search and the need for answers. Gerry is a part of it, now, of what he needs to find a purpose for; digging into the nature of practical research and the physicality of the Eye, the hilarious and hypnotic work of sitting, hand out, feeling the intentions of statements unread. When Gerry is bored, and less advanced than Jon, and has less to do, there is a moment where Jon is unoccupied, and standing at his desk with the warm burst of lamplight over his lips and running the curve of his jaw and catching the wave of his hair. 

And there’s honesty in the kiss, nervous and new, cerebral intent finally blossoming where they both can see. And Gerry’s hands twitch only a little when they push through Jon’s hair, tracing the knowledge that this gesture has a future, now, some semblance of a promise. And when their meeting is brief, and timid, and part of a whole instead of a burst of finality, the terror, for a moment, is entirely human. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some notes I wanted to make about this overall but I wasn't entirely sure where to put them. First, sorry to anyone actually British that struggled through this, I definitely forgot to find all the instances of "pants" and change them. If you want to picture Jon in really dressy underwear at work that's your god given right. Also, I now know you guys don't have creamer or even put cream in your coffee, so. Those parts probably read a little absurd. I appreciate your patience with my culturally Canadian fanfic. Also, I am not someone who read Jon and Martin as having the buildup they apparently did in s4 (I was genuinely surprised by the q&a confirmation lol), so it might seem weird to some people that I made this take place in s4...if you're like me and wanted a bit of an antidote to some of the more imbalanced part of their interactions, then you'll probably not need any justification for this, but if anyone made it this far and feels conflicted...feel free to envision your own resolution to that plotline with Gerry as an added bisexual bonus I guess! The world is your gay oyster lmfao. 
> 
> Regardless I hope people enjoyed the first time I managed to finish a fanfic over 6k, my hands were possessed by Gerry's ghost and forced to spread the gospel of how much he definitely wanted to kiss Jon.
> 
> Also, once more for the road:
> 
> JonGerry rights 
> 
> 🤘👁️👄👁️🤘


End file.
